Judge Makes Divorcing Couple Swap Facebook Passwords

PolygamousRanchKid writes with news of a recent court order during divorce proceedings: both parties must give their social networking passwords to the other, so that each side can snoop for evidence. From the article: "Everyone knows that evidence from social networking sites comes in handy for lawsuits and divorces. Attorneys usually get that material by visiting someone’s page or asking that they turn over evidence from their page, not by signing into their accounts. But judges are sometimes forcing litigants to hand over the passwords to their Facebook accounts. Should they be? What was the reason behind the court-authorized hacking in the Gallion case? ... While all may be ‘fair’ in love and war (and personal injuries), password exchanges like this are not kosher according to Facebook’s terms of service. I wonder if Judge Shluger is aware that his order violates Facebook’s TOS, which require that users not hand over their passwords to anyone else. Shluger did, at least, try to limit the privacy invasiveness of his order by telling the parties not to prank each other. 'Neither party shall visit the website of the other’s social network and post messages purporting to be the other,' he included in the order."

Comments

Re:If evidence is found by swapping passwords...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty easily, actually. People actually believe their "private" messages are private. Plus, friending someone on Facebook is something you do even before trading phone numbers these days, so you're going to get their real account if you meet them in real life in any sort of work/school related capacity.

When I was in college (only a couple of years ago), I met a girl a couple of years younger who was in a history class I was taking to fill up some requirements. She had a fiance, but he didn't pay her enough attention and bored her, so she was looking for action on the side. Some of the steamiest messages I've ever seen on a computer screen, all via her real Facebook account. She married the guy later and still has the account. The messages are at least still in my inbox on Facebook, so I assume they're still in hers too.

Re:Terms of Service

[BitterOak]

The court order isn't directed or served to Facebook.

True. They couldn't be charged with failing to comply with a court order. But if they deleted the account knowing that it's contents were subject to a court order they could certainly be charged with destruction of evidence, which is a felony.

Re:One question

[larry bagina]

Think again