Facebook tampering can be a felony

Have you been tempted to do something like this? You somehow get access to someone else’s Facebook account, so you hop on and alter the profile, then maybe send a few offensive messages to the person’s friends. It’s a harmless prank, right? 

 

Whoa. According to a California appeals court, that could constitute identity theft and could be a felony punishable with jail time.

 

The case came to light in a post by lawyers Venkat Balasubramani and Eric Goldman at Ars Technica. It began when a male juvenile, Rolando, received a text message from an unidentified source sharing a girl’s password to her email account. He apparently used access to her email to change her Facebook password and then signed on to her FB account. He “posted, in her name, prurient messages on two of her male friends’ pages (walls) and altered her profile description in a vulgar manner,” the appeals court ruling said.

 

Her dad called the cops and the kid confessed, saying he meant it as a joke. He was found guilty in juvenile court of a felony. The kid, who had a recent prior offense, was sentenced to 90 days to a year in a juvenile offenders program. His lawyer appealed and lost.

 

The California statute says it’s illegal when someone:

willfully obtains personal identifying information (of the victim and) uses that information for any unlawful purpose, including to obtain, or attempt to obtain, credit, goods, services, real property, or medication information.

Even though the perp was the unwitting recipient of the victim’s email password, the appeals court said he was guilty of willfully obtaining personal identifying information because he kept the password and used it, Balasubramani wrote.

 

The court said Rolando used that info for an unlawful purpose when he defamed the girl. Also, the court found a criminal offense, Balasubramani said. “The defendant’s actions violated section 653m, which makes illegal any contact with another person using ‘obscene language … by means of an electronic communication device … with (the) intent to annoy.” (Oy. How many times have you done that today?) Post continues after video.

How can you protect your Facebook account? A few tips:

But was the outcome of this case overkill? Kids will be kids, especially when they come across another kid’s password. Goldman said, “It was unquestionably wrong behavior, but given its inevitability, it probably shouldn’t be felonious.”

 

Some commenters at Ars Technica agreed. “Stryker137″ wrote:

If this happened to me when I was a kid, my dad would have told me to man up, change my password, and get over it. And that’s what I’ll tell my kids when this inevitably happens to them. And later in life, this is the kind of thing my college roommates would do to each other as pranks, and everyone laughed, cleaned up their pages and life went on.

“EatingPie” said it should be a crime.

Impersonation is illegal IRL, why not on the Internet? And impersonation is typically done with intent to harm — or generally results in harm — so, again, what’s wrong with the law?

Eric Limer shared his view at Geekosystem:

I think it is pretty clear that what Rolando did was willful and wrong and that he deserves to catch some flak for it, but I also think it is dangerous to consider it identity theft. California apparently does not agree, considering that a relatively new statute, Section 528.5, doesn’t even require the “willfully obtained personal information” part, effectively meaning that going online and pretending to be someone, despite not stealing (or even claiming to have) anything to prove it, is identity theft.

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Facebook sequel: Stolen scooter found old-fashioned way

Memo to aspiring scooter thieves: Stop stealing from Robin Maynard.

The effort is futile.

The Orlando woman who tracked down her $3,300 olive-green stolen scooter in March with tips from Facebook friends, remarkably, has done it again.

The first time was a made-for-the-movies ending. So here comes the edgy sequel.

Once a crime scene investigator for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Maynard now heads up Libby’s Legacy Breast Cancer Foundation, which raises money to provide health services for uninsured women in Central Florida and uses scooters in an annual fundraising ride.

Last week, she became the unlikely victim of scooter larceny for the second time in four months. The same two-wheeler was taken from the yard outside her Orlando home.

Remembering her original success, Maynard rounded up her Facebook posse for another adventure. A number of posts from friends claimed to have seen the scooter in and around east Orlando, but no one could be certain.

In the end, the tip came the old-fashioned way. A reader of an Orlando Sentinel article on the second theft Thursday noticed the scooter on her curb while she was taking out the trash. She then Googled Maynard’s name and eventually called Libby’s Legacy Breast Cancer Foundation to provide the information.

Maynard responded to the scene and found her scooter with the ignition popped out and the steering column drilled off.

The former crime scene investigator looked for fingerprints, but she said it had been wiped down using bleach.

She taped the whole thing on her phone and posted videos to her Facebook page. The good Samaritan will receive a free rubdown from Bodyscape Massage in Orlando. As in the earlier manhunt, congratulatory notes peppered Maynard’s Facebook page on Thursday.

“Nice work detective Robin,” one commenter wrote.

But another writer offered some practical advice:

“Now lock it up for gosh sakes!!”

jofreeman@tribune.com or 407-650-6361

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