40 child pornography sites per minute, an impossible task for a human. While Fiola and his wife went out to dinner one night, someone entered their computer and child pornography flowed in for an hour and a half.
The prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the results of the defense. The charge was dropped, almost 11 months after it was filed.
Ruined my life, my wife's life, and our family's life, Fiola said.
Uncontrolled
At any given moment, around 20 million of the 1 billion computers connected to the internet worldwide are infected with viruses that could give hackers full control over them, according to F-Secure, a manufacturer of security software. Computers often become infected when the user opens an attachment from an unknown email or visits a malicious website.
Pedophiles can insert viruses in various ways. The simplest is to force another computer to visit child pornography sites, collecting images during the process. A computer can be converted into a storage device for images and videos that can be viewed remotely when the equipment is online.
It's also possible for someone to simply make fun of or harm you by inserting one of these viruses in your computer, making it appear as if you're browsing illegal websites on the internet.
In the first publicly known cases of individuals who were innocent victims, two men in Britain were acquitted in 2003 after it was demonstrated that viruses were responsible for child pornography being found on their computers. In one of the cases, a man spent more than a week in jail and three months in partial confinement, as well as losing custody of his daughter.
The situations for innocent cyber users are complicated by the fact that real pedophiles often blame viruses for their crimes, an argument seen as legitimate with skepticism by judges.
It's an example of the old 'my dog ate my homework' excuse, said Phil Malone, director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard University. The problem is that sometimes it really is the dog that eats your homework.
However, it would be difficult for a pedophile to get away with using a fake virus excuse, said expert Jeff Fischbach.
Even careful collectors of child pornography tend to leave incriminating evidence, such as emails and DVDs. No lawyer who resorts to the virus excuse can explain the existence of such evidence, said Damon King, attorney for the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Unit at the US Department of Justice.
Regardless, what's clear is that child pornography appears on a computer and it must be proven how it got there.
A forensic expert in a case involving child pornography found on a computer, Randy Huff, admits that many antivirus programs can work properly and yet infect an equipment. You can't trust computers, said Jeremiah Grossman, founder of WhiteHat Security. He described making a computer download something its owner doesn't want as painfully simple.