In the definitive court case, The People v. Rolando S., a minor named Rolando received a friend’s password in a text message and promptly starts adding some colorful details to her Facebook profile:
Hey, Face Bookers, [sic] I’m [S.], a junior in high school . . . I want to be a pediatrician but I’m not sure where I want to go to college. I have high standards for myself and plan to meet them all. I love to suck dick.
The average Facebook user can look at the above excerpt and determine one thing — this user’s been hacked. Surely, nobody would think this user actually changed her profile on her own.
On the contrary, the victim experienced pain and suffering as a result. “I had people at school call me a slut and a whore,” she said. She took her former “close” friend Rolando to court, where he was charged under a California statute which protects Californians from e-identity theft.
The Internet’s response has been mixed on whether the defendant deserved to get charged. The original post on ars technica encouraged over one hundred comments and a new Twitter update every few minutes for the past 24 hours.
While identify theft is a serious issue, the truth remains that countless Facebook users have messed with one another’s Facebook accounts. It’s what reminds us to keep our passwords safe and to log off computers at the public library.
Or as Twitter user @mickeystiletto put it: “Everyone is going to jail.”
