A California judge has ruled that using another person’s Facebook account password to gain access to their profile, and then trolling using that account, is identity theft.

A juvenile received an unsolicited text message with the victim’s e-mail password. He used the password to gain access to her profile, and posted several inappropriate messages from the victim’s account. He sent posts to her friends, and changed her profile as well. Many of the posts were of a sexual nature.

The victim, also a juvenile, said she suffered stigma as a result of the posts, and is struggling with the attention it brings her at school.

The juvenile was prosecuted under a California statute which applies to anyone who willfully obtains personal information from someone else and uses it for any unlawful purpose, including “to obtain, or attempt to obtain, credit, goods, services, real property or medication information.”

The judge ruled that despite the fact that the information was unsolicited, the defendant did willfully use the information for an unlawful purpose. The juvenile said he meant his comments to be taken as a joke.

The court found that, since the defendant conceded that his conduct satisfied the requirements of a civil defamation claim, the defendant’s act constituted libel and is a criminal offense. The defendant’s actions violated section 653m, which makes illegal any contact with another person using “obscene language by means of an electronic device, with the intent to annoy.”

Could this set a precedent for other states? Stay tuned to find out. In the meantime, don’t use other people’s passwords or profiles, and guard your own.

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How important is it that you construct a strong password? Just ask Fox and Friends Weekend co-host Dave Briggs, or former Alaskan governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Both of them have had their email accounts hacked by intruders who were able to guess their victims’ passwords.

For Briggs, it was his Hotmail account. Writing as Briggs, the attacker sent all of Briggs’ contacts an email begging that they send money via Western Union so that he might be released from Malaysia where he, ostensibly, was trapped.

For Palin, it was her Yahoo e-mail account. The self-deprecating attacker said taking over the account was easy; all he had to do was reset Palin’s password using her birth date and zip code.The security question was “How did you meet your spouse?”. Palin said publicly on several occasions that they met in high school.

How to set a secure password

• Never use a birth date, anniversary, address, child’s name, maiden name or pet’s name. All of those things are in public records or can be easily ascertained.
• The longer your password, the more secure it will be. Never use a password shorter than eight characters.
• Use a combination of numbers, upper and lower case letters and symbols. Use easily remembered phrases, such as “!H8g8rs!” for “I hate gators”.
• Use unique passwords for each account, otherwise the hacker can simultaneously gain access to all your accounts including those you use for online financial transactions.
• Never leave your passwords under your keyboard, or in your purse or wallet. Instead, keep an encrypted spreadsheet on your computer, protected—of course—with a secure password.

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