Two Web site says ESPN is looking at an employee as the Peeping Tom in the Erin Andrews case.
Radar Online says its sources confirm that ESPN is doing a full-scale internal investigation into who shot video of reporter Erin Andrews undressing and posted that video online. TMZ.com also issued a similar report.
Radar says there are seven videos of Andrews and its source says the footage was probably shot by an employee at ESPN.
ESPN is "freaking out, freaking!" the source told Radar.
That account is similar to TMZ's report ,which indicates there are six videos, and that the videos were shot in different hotels, by someone familiar with Andrews' travel schedule.
TMZ says it has viewed the six video segments taken and published without Andrews’ knowledge and permission, and the videos were shot at different times in different cities.
The videos raise the suspicion, TMZ says, that the person who shot them knew her work schedule and was traveling with her.
Lawyers for ESPN and Andrews are feverishly working to find the person responsible for the invasion of the reporter’s privacy.
It was not clear when the video first appeared on the Internet. Most of the links to it had been removed by Tuesday. There are reports that the videos of Andrews, 31, were posted in February 2009 on the Web site Dailymotion but not noticed until recently.
Ephraim Cohen, a spokesman for the video portal Dailymotion, could not confirm the video had actually appeared on his company's site, but said it may have been there months ago.
He said a search for the name of the user who purportedly uploaded the video showed the person had opened an account in February, but had since closed it.
"As far as we can tell, the user took the account and the video down a while ago,'' he said.
Illegal videos often are posted to multiple sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion, which remove them as soon as they are found. The videos also often circulate on peer-to-peer or file-sharing sites, much like illegal music downloads.
Graham Cluley, who writes a blog for the antivirus software maker Sophos, wrote that several links purporting to send Internet users to the Andrews video actually sent them to sites with malicious software and computer viruses.
He said the some of the hackers actually include a portion of the video on their sites, apparently hoping that the malware gets passed along as users share the link with friends.
"They keep on using (videos like this) because it works,'' Cluley said. "If more people thought with their head rather than with their trousers, maybe less of these viruses would spread on our computers.''
Sophos.com says the malware programs affect both Macs and PCs, and can catch Mac users off guard, since they have been led to believe all Macs are not susceptible to hacking.
Erin Andrews peephole video leads to malware from Sophos Labs on Vimeo.
