Is email hacking illegal?
Asked by
potrick (
370
)
July 30th, 2009
from IM
Most of us remember the incident last fall when someone “hacked” into Sarah Palin’s email account by figuring out the answer to her “secret question” on Wikipedia. What I’m wondering is whether or not there are specific laws in the United States making it illegal to access email accounts in this manner, or otherwise reading the email of others without their permission or knowledge.
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Well considering it’s illegal to read someones mail without consent, I’m guessing the same is applied to email. I don’t know the exact law you are breaking by doing it, but I’m sure a lawyer could find something.
“Snooping while an email is in “real-time” transmission between sender and receiver is a federal crime under the Electronic Communications Protection Act (ECPA) (18 U.S.C.A 2517(4)), it has been accomplished by hackers.
The ECPA also permits an ISP to look through all stored messages, including email awaiting you in your mailbox or recently sent and received mail. Some ISPs temporarily store all messages that pass through the system. The ECPA normally prevents the ISP from disclosing the messages to others, but even here there are exceptions. Law enforcement officials, when armed with proper warrants or administrative subpoenas, can gather basic information about users from ISPs, including their names, and also gain access to the content of stored messages. Also, once the email reaches its destination, the ECPA does not protect against snooping at the recipient’s mailbox.”
(source: http://public.findlaw.com/internet/email-privacy.html)
You may also want to check out http://www.netatty.com/privacy/privacy.html.
Makes sense. But if the email’s destination is a webmail service like Yahoo Mail or Gmail, is it illegal to get into another person’s account and read it that way?
@barumonkey are you saying that the law does not consider it illegal when the email is static at destination? Isn’t it illegal voyeurism when someone hacks into a gmail account to read their email?
It is normally covered by Privacy and Cyber laws. It relies on the nation you are and where the person you are hacking his mailbox stay and where the server is housing the mailbox is. If any of these is in the USA then you are in deep trouble if you get caught. If all of these are in a country where there is no cyber laws and privacy laws (there are many of them) then you can do what you want. All developed countries have cyber and privacy laws.
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