John Lucich.....

Cyber Lies

John Lucich:  Thank you for inviting me.

Penny Sanservieri:  John tell us a little bit about your book.  What is Cyber Lies about and what does it help us to do?

John Lucich:  Well Cyber Lies is about empowering the people to be able to analyze their own computers.  So if they think that their kids are involved in activities online that are either inappropriate or they believe they may become victimized by having strangers going after then you’d be able to analyze the computer and find out exactly what their kids are involved in – who is communicating with their kids on a daily basis and then that’s true whether that’s for your kids or for your spouse.

Penny Sanservieri:  How difficult is it though to go through your computer and analyze it?  Isn’t it a little tricky?

John Lucich:  It’s very difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing and that’s the importance of Cyber Lies.  Because Cyber Lies takes you step by step click here click here click here to actually image your entire hard drive and then analyze that hard drive.  It even walks you through on where to get the software for free to create a forensic image.  The same forensic image that are created by experts from around the world who do this on a daily basis.

Penny Sanservieri:  That’s really pretty incredible.  Now at what point do you think for let’s say for example a parent to go through this process with their kids?

John Lucich:  Any time they’re suspicious.  Any time there are warning signs that let – that tell them that their kids are involved in things.  Here are some of the early warning signs that kids are involved in something that they don’t want their parents to know about.  When they close the door.  When they are constantly online.  In our house it’s doors must be open when that computer is on end of story no questions.  When they take their cell phones out on the deck or into a remote section of the house to take a phone call.  Individually these signs don’t mean much but cumulatively they start to mean things.  

When you walk into the room where the computer is and you used to see the screen but now it’s turned around and you actually have to walk up to the computer to see the screen because they person on that computer now has the ability to X out of the browser so you don’t see what they were doing.  A computer should be in a public room that the screen is always viewable by anybody who walks into that room immediately.

Penny Sanservieri:  So any – because a lot of times parents will sort of let it go.  But with – when we live in such a you know world full of predators for kids and kids getting into danger they should at the first sign of this start to question where their kids are going online.

John Lucich:  Right you don’t even have to question.  Just image the drive and take a look yourself you’ll know immediately and you’ll be able to see everything.  For those people who want more information in the future after you image the drive you can actually install the software product that will monitor your kids.  One of the biggest mistakes is that parents often do that first and that’s not good and the reason being is when you install software and then you allow that software to continually run and build up the logs it’s actually deleting over the – actually overwriting the deleted areas of the hard drive.  A lot of the space that you’re looking to retrieve information from so you are destroying the very data that you’re looking to seek to recover.  
So we tell people to create a forensic image of the hard drive first and then load anything on that you want.  Some of these programs are very powerful.  They will actually let you see in real time what your kids are doing.  So while they’re downstairs in the family room you can be upstairs in your room watching your screen and you’ll see everything that is going on on their screen.

Penny Sanservieri:  Wow.  That’s pretty amazing and that’s very powerful.  I don’t know that a lot of people are really aware that the software is out there and is available for both parents and for spouses because your book talks about you know how you can find out if you’ve got a cheating spouse.

John Lucich:  Right absolutely and you know unfortunately we do a lot of those cases and every time 100% of the times where a spouse has thought that their spouse is cheating on them we find the information.  Now that’s the only caveat that as long as they haven’t tipped their hand and we’ve had spouses do that where they’ve confronted the spouse before imaging the drive and the next thing you know the hard drive gets totally erased and overwritten and its almost impossible to retrieve that stuff.

Penny Sanservieri:  How much of a problem – I mean you say you see cases like this.  What are you – talk a little bit about the work that you do.
John Lucich:  Well we’re involved in computer forensics that means we image hard drives on a daily basis for a variety of cases.  We work cases involving trade secret violations, sexual harassment both for plaintiffs and defense attorneys.  We work when one partner is stealing money from another partner or unfair competition.  We get involved in helping parents identify what their kids are doing online.  You know it wasn’t too long ago where we had to show that their daughter was placing nude pictures of herself up on MySpace.com.  So to see the mother break down like that right in front of you it’s heart wrenching and to see these kids do such ridiculous things.  Again we also do other types of cases such as suicides and homicides where we were involved in a case where a young lady was killed and the mother is looking to identify people who were involved.  The one person was already convicted of the murder but she believes that other people were involved so we’re involved in the case right now.

Penny Sanservieri:  That is really incredible.  In an age of all of these different ways to communicate – instant message and – that’s another question too.  Can instant messages be – if somebody says oh you know what don’t email me because my wife will find out but send me an instant message.  Are those traceable at all or does that just sort of evaporate into nothing?

John Lucich:  Nothing evaporates into nothing.  It’s all there.

Penny Sanservieri:  Really?

John Lucich:  Yes in fact if you get that in your hard drive it is going to be cached somewhere on your hard drive and we find all that kind of stuff.  Sometimes it’s a little more difficult because you know depending upon the use of the hard drive if one’s person computer is one thing but when five or six people are using it from the same family it tends to get overwritten a lot quicker but we’ve seen data last up to over three years and we’ve brought it back.

Penny Sanservieri:  That’s really – that is really very incredible.

John Lucich:  We had a case where an individual – a boss must have been in a bad mood he comes in one day and says what the heck are you doing clean this stuff off your desk and it wasn’t heck and it wasn’t stuff.  So for the two bad words his secretary walked out on him filed a lawsuit that embroiled his company into $75,000.00 worth of legal bills in over a year and a half.  The defense attorney on the case went to work for another company so a new defense attorney came in that was assigned to the case and the first words out of her mouth were has anybody ever taken a look at this woman’s computer?  And they said no and they said well get it back.  
It was reissued to somebody a year and a half ago they got it back and gave it to us and what we found on that computer within three weeks had the entire case dismissed against the client.  It was the most foul profound language that she was using with her friends that no court could ever find out that she had heard these other two words that she would in no way be offended.  So the plaintiff’s attorney actually dropped the case and it ended right there.  Had they had done that a year and a half ago they would have saved the $75,000.00 in legal bills.

Penny Sanservieri:  My gosh.  Now we talked about and we’ve had email and instant messaging.  What about cell phones?  Can somebody – now cell phones are something that are pretty safe right?

John Lucich:  No we can image cell phones.  We can image cell phones and get the photos back off that people deleted.  Got the text messages that went back and forth.  They are a little more difficult in respect that every cell phone stores data differently it’s not like a hard drive where everybody is storing data exactly the same way.  Different places where it’s stored.  But a lot of times we get that information back and because of the fact that the storage device is so much smaller as opposed to a hard drive things tend to get overwritten a lot quicker but we’ve been very, very successful.  
In fact most people will find that the stuff they’re looking for hasn’t even been deleted because people get lazy.  One of our clients was – I walked her through how to look at her husband’s cell phone and as she was checking it when she got back from a business trip she found a message on her cell phone that said “it took me 25 minutes to get out of your neighborhood love you Jen” and she goes what do you think that means?  It means she spent the night at your house while you were away on a business trip that’s what that means.  But she found it and it wasn’t even deleted.  She didn’t need to forensically analyze it just pick up the cell phone at 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning and you know the sleeping patterns of your spouse.  
What we do is we tell people to do it legally.  Make sure they have a legal right.  You can’t be doing this kind of stuff to your boyfriend or girlfriends computers or cell phones but if it’s a marital asset there should be no problem.  But we always counsel people to make sure that they check with their attorneys.

Penny Sanservieri:  So any other tips for somebody thinking about doing this?  I mean obviously your book is an – I mean it’s a wealth of information and again it’s called Cyber Lies.com – I’m sorry the website is cyberlies.com the book is Cyber Lies.  But are there any other tips for somebody thinking about well they may have a cheating spouse.  Like you said make sure first off that obviously it is a spouse and not a boyfriend because you have a right to look into that.  But anything else that you can recommend?

John Lucich:  Yeah be very discreet about your activities because unfortunately we got a couple of cases where they haven’t been and next thing you know the computer is being trashed one way shape or form or another to the point where the computer has actually left the house in come cases.  Because anything that you might do to tip your hand is only going to work against you in trying to retrieve information that you are looking for.  Almost 100% of the time if you do a good job at keeping it discreet you’re going to get that information that you are looking for.  

Number two whatever you decide to do do immediately.  We had a case where one of our clients was hemming and horning over a three month period and she finally decided to do it and when she shipped us the hard drive we found out that just three weeks prior he had installed a program to delete and overwrite the entire – had she done this two months ago, three months ago or even four months ago when she first contacted us we would have had all the data that she was looking for.

Penny Sanservieri:  Oh my gosh.

John Lucich:  So while we did find some things most of it was gone.  So be discreet and if you’re going to do something do it immediately.

Penny Sanservieri:  Right, right exactly.  Then the software is fairly easy – people can install the software?

John Lucich:  Oh yeah we walk you through the software installation.  We walk you through where to download it from I mean everything is covered in the book step by step.  There is nothing you need to do.

Penny Sanservieri:  That is amazing.  That is amazing and unfortunately we do live in a world where things like email communication and email affairs even and test messaging has just become such an issue for married people.  There have been a number of new stories about this too and you probably see a lot more of affairs starting by email.

John Lucich:  Oh right absolutely.  It’s like online activity and interaction and it happens so quickly and so personal you know people can talk 24 hours a day 7 days a week because we don’t have to be there with each other just pick up the cell phone and start commuting text messages.  You know out of all these things – and there are some non technical places for people to look also that involve technology such as those people who are familiar with Easy Pass.  You know when your husband says he’s going to be in the northern part of New York and the Easy Pass says he was in the southern part of New Jersey you got to wonder why – what he was doing down there you know.  Because Easy Pass records will show you.  Gas records will show you where they’ve been to confirm or not.  And people forget when they use Easy Pass and people forget when they use those gas cards that they are leaving a track of what they’ve been doing.

But the number one reason people need to know is for health reasons.  Just because your spouse has decided to sleep with somebody else and potentially be exposed to all the different types of incurable diseases out there by them not telling you takes that decision away from you and that’s unconscionable.

Penny Sanservieri:  Yeah that is absolutely true.  That is absolutely true.  John, thank you so much for being on the show.  Once again the book is Cyber Lies.  The website is CyberLies.com.  There is a ton of information by the way on your website.  It’s a terrific site and they can even get in touch with you there if they have any questions about retaining your services too?

John Lucich:  Absolutely.

Penny Sanservieri:  Wonderful.  John thank you again so much for being on the show.