hacking someone's email: Uncool or illegal?

April 6, 2006 6:38 PM

What are the legal penalties, if any, for guessing a former spouse's email password correctly and using that access to gather information for child/spousal support court case.

"Someone that I know" (not me) has been divorced almost a year, but her former husband has been being a complete ass about paying support on time and paying her settlement for their divorce. He said he wasn't working and didn't have money, etc.

She got some paperwork from his lawyer and it had an email address for him, she wondered if he was stupid enough to use the same email password and he was. She found emails from his new job(she didn't know he had gotten) detailing his whole package: salary, benefits, retirement, profit sharing etc.

She also read emails from his current wife that went back to when she and her former husband were still married, while they were going to counselling trying to save the marriage. These notes clearly showed a sexual relationship was already going on between them.

I advised her to stop torturing herself by continually reading them. I want her to move on and let it go. Yes, he should be a better man and pay for his responsibilities, and she found out he has a job, let the judge come down on him for being a lying snake. But don't ever let on that she broke into his email, I don't even know if that is illegal or not though.

So, is it illegal to break into email or not? Is it just not cool? Is it the idiot-who-doesn't-protect-himself's fault? What would mefi do?

posted by Jazz Hands to Human Relations (22 answers total)

IAAL, but I'm not your lawyer or your friend's lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I mean it. The best I (or any lawyer not an expert in this field) can give you is general impressions.

What she did is most certainly illegal. It's an invasion of privacy, without consent. If it's not a criminal violation (which it may well be), it's at the least a civil violation.

Think about it, if you hacked into the Pentagon, do you think they'd care if you only made it in by guessing a password? Or would you get locked up and interrogated real quick?

She should stop immediately, and if she's concerned, she should talk to a lawyer. The circumstances where it would be a good idea to admit to a crime in open court are few and far between.
posted by kingjoeshmoe at 6:45 PM on April 6, 2006

She should call her divorce lawyer and ask him about it.
posted by BackwardsCity at 6:51 PM on April 6, 2006

She likely committed several felonies by illegally accessing his email.
posted by reverendX at 7:03 PM on April 6, 2006

There are several felonies which have been added to the Federal Code in the last few years relating to hacking of various kinds. Pretty much any attempt to illicitly use a computer, especially breaking in using passwords you're not entitled to know, is now a serious crime. People have gotten multiple year sentences for it.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:09 PM on April 6, 2006

Your friend might benefit from hiring a PI and helping them out by suggesting possible places where her ex "might" be employed.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:16 PM on April 6, 2006

I'm not a lawyer but I am a security professional. The relevant law is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). From the link:

From a rights perspective, the ECPA only protects individuals' communications against government surveillance conducted without a court order, from third parties with no legitmate access to the messages, and from the carriers of the messages, such as Internet service providers. However it appears to provide little privacy protection to employees with respect to their communications as conducted on the equipment owned by their employer.

It's a Federal felony, without a doubt. Good luck!
posted by scalefree at 7:23 PM on April 6, 2006

Response by poster: I told her that she found out where he works, that's enough.

I think she is thinking about the scenario where he is lying on the stand about his finances and her lawyer rips into him in this fashion, "Mr. X, isn't it true you've been employed at corporation Q for Y months at $$$ salary? And isn't it true you are deliberately deceiving this court....blah, blah, blah..."

She thinks he will just think she did have him investigated. But what if she needs to account for how she found out.

I wish there were some way to tip off the ex without tattling on her. Some anonymous email about having ridiculously easy to guess passwords. But that would probably be caught in spam filter.
posted by Jazz Hands at 7:28 PM on April 6, 2006

Because it was on a computer, she could get felony hacking charges.

There was a slashdot article a while ago where kids who used passwords tapped to their school-provided laptops got in and started messing around with 'em. They were all charged with felonies.

I think that particular example was over the top, and while I don't think she should be charged with a felony, I certainly think she could.

I'm not a lawyer, of course.
posted by delmoi at 7:28 PM on April 6, 2006

What would happen if she, or a close friend, were to print out the relevant/revealing e-mail messages and then send them to, let's say, her attorney and her ex-husband's attorney anonymously? Just saying.

Might want to print them out at a "neutral place" -- like a public library or Kinko's where no "sign-in" or identification is required.

[Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers]. Just saying.
posted by ericb at 8:19 PM on April 6, 2006

I told her that she found out where he works, that's enough.

On second thought -- you are right. With this info -- and as Civil_Disobedient suggests, she should hire a PI to investigate. Hmmm, maybe that PI could somehow dig deeper into the charges of adultery.
posted by ericb at 8:23 PM on April 6, 2006

I believe he can be compelled to provide documentation about his employment income, esp. since she now knows where he works. She should be able to have support payments deducted from his wages.

One idea is for you to log into his account from a neutral location, and change his password. He'll call the ISP and get it reset, and maybe it won't be the same. Repeat as needed.

Speaking as a divorced woman whose ex- didn't pay even the very limited child support required, and whose ex- screwed around before and during counseling, the very best thing for her to do is stop. Detaching her emotions and life from him is critical. It's not easy when there are kids, but setting clear boundaries is essential for her to rebuild her life.
posted by theora55 at 8:32 PM on April 6, 2006

Ditto what scalefree said, from another information security professional. She committed a felony, and if she tries to use it in court, she's going to be up a creek, especially if his lawyer has the brains he was born with.
posted by deadmessenger at 8:55 PM on April 6, 2006

Find that same information another, less illegal way--maybe through a PI, as some have suggested. Shouldn't be hard for the PI, if the guy is as careless as your story implies. In any subsequent legal proceedings, never bring up the illicit email access.
posted by staggernation at 9:11 PM on April 6, 2006

Couldn't you call the company and ask if so-and-so is employed there? Not exactly privileged information...
posted by Frankieist at 11:46 PM on April 6, 2006

Hi honey. I just wanted to mention that I still have the same job, I am not hiding any income, and I am not having an affair. I'm just sayin'.

(JazzHands is my wife, whom I love madly, and who is currently 3000 miles away because I am travelling on business this week)
posted by Lokheed at 12:15 AM on April 7, 2006

Good point about the Pentagon and guessing your way in there. I agree that figuring out how to read someone else's e-mail without their knowledge is asking for trouble.

If I may piggyback, I've always been curious about this: What about guessing web site addresses that aren't public knowledge or available in search engines? Is that like guessing a password? Is it hacking? I'm talking about something like, "Let's see... apples.google.com? Nope. oranges.google.com? Nope. pages.google.com? Jackpot! Hey, how about jackpot.google.com? Nope." etc.
posted by emelenjr at 12:47 AM on April 7, 2006

In the UK the legal position is that if a spouse (or ex-spouse) comes across information that the other has assets or income that hasn't been disclosed, they are entitled to use it provided they haven't used illegal means to get the information.

So if you come across an unlocked file cabinet, you can look through it. If it's locked, you can look for the key and open it, but you can't break into it.

But in my experience (as an ex-family lawyer), the judge will usually not take too kindly to the other party's outrage at having their privacy violated because they are under a duty to make "full and frank disclosure" of their assets and income, and if they haven't done so and been caught out, they'll suffer for it.

I would guess that 'full and frank disclosure' rules apply in most jurisdictions. If this were an English case, she could give her lawyer the name of the husband's company, and full details of his salary, without needing to say where she got it from. If he wouldn't admit to working there, the court could force him to provide details of his income, and if he still refused, the court could go direct to the employer and order it to provide the information.

My advice is that she gives the information to her lawyer, concerning his income and assets.

As far as knowing about his personal relationship, I'm sure that really hurts, and I don't know if I was in her position that I'd be able to resist reading that stuff too. But she's torturing herself, the guy sounds like a prick and she should thank her lucky stars she's out of the marriage.
posted by essexjan at 2:13 AM on April 7, 2006

I'm pretty certain it's illegal. She should talk to her lawyer. IANAL, but I work for a divorce lawyer, so I've seen this kind of issue before. It has the potential to cause a LOT of trouble, and it's not worth it.
Her lawyer can probably get the ex's employment info pretty easily through legal means which would then actually hold up in court (thus, worth the cost).
posted by Sprout the Vulgarian at 6:41 AM on April 7, 2006

To your friend:

Well, and ask your lawyer about this, if the e-mail account was acquired while you were together, and paid for with your combined assets (most states have a "community property" law or something similar that states who owns what when something is acquired while married), you might have a legal right to open the mailbox. For example, if it was paid for using a debit card linked to a joint checking account.

If it's a freebie, like GMail or Hotmail, you're SOL.
posted by Merdryn at 7:00 AM on April 7, 2006

Your friend definitely needs to have some other source for this information. Don't ever tell your lawyer that this happened, either. The attorney-client privilege has lots of exceptions. I'm not going to try and analyze this, but if your friend has a plausible explanation for her info, then that will be sufficient. The idea is to keep the judge's dissatisfaction focused on the lying spouse, not the hacking spouse.
posted by MrZero at 8:16 AM on April 7, 2006

Don't ever tell your lawyer that this happened, either. The attorney-client privilege has lots of exceptions.

I would think the opposite, and encourage the woman to disclose this information to her lawyer. What "exceptions" would cause a lawyer to divulge that information to the former spouse?

Lawyers routinely have clients admitting to them that they committed a crime, and that information is pretty sacrosanct, AFAIK. IANAL, though.
posted by gwenzel at 9:04 AM on April 7, 2006

I've always been curious about this: What about guessing web site addresses that aren't public knowledge or available in search engines?

It happened. I don't know what ever became of this case though.
posted by zorro astor at 10:10 AM on April 7, 2006