If you guessed someone's password to their facebook, in the eyes of the law, what's the penalty?

You could probably be charged with aiding and abetting. The penalty would probably depend on the law the person you assisted broke.

The police said they had “my IP” for the pictures posted, except I know for a fact that I didn’t post them, though it was done.

It’s different depending on where you live.

Individuals on facebook are responsible for their own personal password security.
This user should contact the facebook fraud department and make a request.

If the individual believes that you have accessed their account when you were not authorized, they would have to get a lawyer and prove it in a court of law. Not an easy thing to prove without ISP and data centre hosting logs.

It really comes down to capital and if the person is upset enough to dump loads of cash into fighting you over it. The police have very little jurisdiction on the internet and can basically make nice requests that individuals stop what they’re doing. That seems to be changing though.

Further, internet providers very rarely hand out personal information unless a warrant is presented by the police. Make the police prove they have the evidence to backup their claims by showing you record of the warrant used to gather your information. Don’t get bullied into admitting something you didn’t do. The judge has the final say.

When all else fails, force them to prove that you were the invidiual sitting at this comptuer at this time of day. Even with IP addresses it may have been another individual in your house using your internet. I would start researching piracy cases in your country. Specifically the ones where the case was thrown out to see what happened.

Sounds like someone in your house did the posting. Did you tell anyone that has access to your computer?

And why would you try to guess someone else’s password? That is not only not particularly legal, it is just mean. You might try apologizing to the person, if they are a friend of yours (or were).

Why were the police called into this anyway? Can you give us more details?

No no, It wasn’t someone in my house, I guarantee it.

@bradgillap thanks !

Guessing their password is still attempting to access their account without consent. You could very well be charged with hacking. I would stop talking about this online and talk with a lawyer.

@reactor5

Really don’t know, somebody changed the password to her account and thats it.

@bradgillap

Do you know of any cases such as the ones you mentioned?

@crunchaweezy None that I can think of but try google. I would take dynamicduo’s advice and cease speaking anymore on the topic in a public domain though.

I think to find out what the worst case scenario is, you look up what happened to the kid that did this to Sarah Palin’s email address.

Thanks everyone :)

I work at an ISP and if someone calls to tell us that there is personal or defaming information hosted on our servers, we refer them to the local authorities. We do not police our content, if something is lawfully wrong we would accept a warrant as due cause to take it down. We don’t do anything otherwise. Also, if someone guessed your password for lets say, your email account and sent lewd pictures of someone or something to all of your contacts, thats just your fault for having a weak password. It is not up to the local authorities or the website (facebook?) to hold anyone accountable for what someone else has done with your account, your account is just that, your account.

Someone broke into my house, stole my computers and (obviously) found all of my passwords, including the PIN numbers for my bank and credit cards. They then logged into my facebook and hotmail accounts and read all my mail, even deleting a couple.

I know the name of the people who did it, and so does the police. I even filed charges against them. Nothing happened. The prosecutor said he’ll look into it in 4 years’ time.

So, if I understand correctly, it’s a very loose case?

Why not just man up, apologize, give up names, and let it end?

Cause there weren’t names. If they take it to court, they’ll be loosing a lot of moneys.

Well, you know who you told the password to, and if you didn’t trash this person’s site, you know who did. And the if the police have the trail leading to you, then you’re the one left holding the bag.

I didn’t trash the site, they still use it to this day. Well, good luck for them because they would have to go through extra unnecessary work to acquire any IP’s.

@crunchaweezy – What all of this tells you is don’t try to guess anyone else’s password ever again, but if you do, then don’t tell anyone.

Yeah well, in any case, it’s ridiculous, I doubt the police department would waste resources on it. There are murderers, drug dealers, pedophiles roaming the streets freely.

This would be a civil action. They would go after your money, not your physical self.