User Charged With Felony For Using Fake Name On MySpace

Recently a user, Lori Drew, was charged with a felony for the heinous crime of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Lori was charged for signing up for MySpace using a fake name. "The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a "protected computer" was the profiles of other MySpace users. If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it's really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can be charged with hacking. That's an astounding concept. Does this mean that everyone who uses Bugmenot could be prosecuted? Also, this isn't a minor crime, it's a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment per count. In Drew's case she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions."

Comments

just respect the Terms of Service

[crazybit]

and you will be fine. If you don't like the conditions, just don't use the service.

Sounds fair

[Gandalf]

It doesn't frighten me at all, really. The whole point is that using a false name isn't just violating the terms of service in this context, but that using a false name is an attempt (deliberate or not) to bypass an authorisation scheme (user privacy options), allowing access to data otherwise not available.

The alternative is us bitching about doubtful privacy guarantees from social networking sites.