Going back in time

August 12, 2008 2:01 PM

Is there a way to pull up previous versions of a Myspace profile, specifially, the part that says "Last Login"?

I need to be able to pull up someone's private Myspace display to show back "Last Login" dates to use in court to show that the individual has had access to the internet when she has said that she has not. Does anyone know of any way to do so?

posted by messylissa to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I think you could try to enter key words to the myspace profile in a Google search and click on the 'cached' version. If your lucky, Google would have taken the cached snapshot during the time-frame you need.
posted by Acacia at 2:09 PM on August 12, 2008

If you are involved in a legal proceedings there is a good chance that MySpace will comply and give you the information that you require. I'm not sure what level of crime needs to have been committed, but they were helpful to law enforcement here with login information and IP addresses with a serious crime in my region, so you may want to contact their lgal department just to see what they might need to make this happen.
posted by jessamyn at 2:16 PM on August 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

You might be able to get a snapshot of it at Archive.org, but it's unlikely to have the granularity you want. 2nd on jessamyn's comments - myspace will have the full login history.
posted by benzenedream at 3:21 PM on August 12, 2008

It looks like any private profile is immune to Google and the Wayback machine. The legal proceedings involve family law and custody issues...I'm not sure if Myspace would be inclined to help here. Any other thoughts?
posted by messylissa at 3:28 PM on August 12, 2008

This is what subpoenas were made for.
posted by oaf at 3:36 PM on August 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm a lawyer, but my memory is foggy here - so please, please ask your own lawyer or someone who has a sharper memory on these points.

I think a subpoena is definitely in order - I'm not sure a court is going to accept ("authenticate") your Googling results as admissible evidence.

Also, if you just find a last login page, how could you prove that the account owner was the one who logged in? IP address info from MySpace might help you make the argument a little stronger (i.e., account is always accessed from this IP, the IP is tied to account holder's location that only account holder has access to?).
posted by KAS at 7:04 PM on August 12, 2008

Unless you're going on fuckin' Judge Judy, you need to speak to your lawyer about subpoenaing login records from MySpace - or, if the issue is simply about someone accessing the internet, their ISP. The latter should be much simpler to explain than the former.

If someone tried to convince me of something using only printouts from the internet - printouts which anyone with an IQ above 60 can fake in ten seconds - I would strangle them with their own intestines.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 7:13 AM on August 13, 2008