A young woman contacted me last week after reading some of my previous reporting on Remote Access Tools (RATs) and how they can be used to spy on people through the webcams and microphones in their computers. The woman had seen an image in one of the articles that, despite being blurred, looked almost exactly like her and her home. She felt worried and violated—and wondered what else may have been seen by her voyeur.

Her story is typical. Few victims even know they are victims, sometimes finding out only years later when a security scan turns up RAT malware on their machines or when law enforcement contacts them after arresting a digital voyeur.

That was the case in England, where the National Crime Agency (NCA) last year arrested 33-year-old Stefan Rigo of Leeds as part of an international effort to take out the major RAT vendors. In May 2014, the FBI arrested the alleged ringleaders behind Blackshades , a sophisticated RAT widely available online for $40. Several months later, the NCA caught up with Rigo, a Blackshades user who had purchased the RAT using his ex-girlfriend's identity. A search of Rigo's computers revealed "a series of images that involved people engaged in sexual acts over Skype or in front of their computers," according to an NCA statement

An NCA spokesperson told the BBC that the agency had confirmed the identities of 14 spy victims, none of whom were aware of the voyeurism. (Other victims may simply have been unidentifiable.) In addition, half of the 14 knew Rigo personally—he had apparently made special efforts to infect female friends and acquaintances, a supremely personal violation, and then spied on them for hours at a time.

During a trial at Leeds Magistrates Court in September 2015, Rigo admitted that he would spend anywhere from five to 12 hours a day spying on women through their webcams and that he had done so for three years before getting caught. He pled guilty to violating the Computer Misuse Act and was also found guilty of voyeurism offenses.

This week, Rigo finally learned his fate. The judge sentenced him to a 40-week suspended jail term—which he won't have to serve if he stays out of trouble—along with 200 hours of unpaid community service. He must also forfeit all his computer gear and will be placed on the UK's sex offender registry for seven years.

In the US, RAT users often face stiffer penalties, such as the 18 months in prison handed down to the young man who spied on Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf and the 72 months given to a disabled California voyeur. Rigo at least had the sense not to compound his voyeurism with sextortion, however, which features in most of the high-profile RAT cases on this side of the pond.

Governments appear to be following a two-pronged approach to dealing with the RAT issue. Eradication of the problem isn't possible, given the many legitimate uses for remote access software and the difficulty of controlling distribution of anything on the Internet, but RAT use can at least be made more difficult and dangerous. To that end, the FBI has worked to make the most popular tools more difficult to get, and police internationally are sending a message that RAT controllers are not as anonymous as they feel when spying on victims.

As Angela McKenna, senior investigating officer for the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement after Rigo's sentencing, "Users of these tools are continuing to find that despite having no physical contact or interaction with their victims, they can still be identified, tracked down and brought to justice by the NCA and its partners."