Email Hacking Laws
During the 2008 presidential election there was a brief moment of outrage after a Tennessee college student broke into Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account. The hacker accomplished this by correctly answering Palin's "Secret Question" with publicly accessible information he found on Wikipedia. The media quickly forgot the story, but since then, many people are wondering: what legal protection is there against people accessing my email like this? Turns out there is some, but it's less black and white than you might think.
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In transit
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The Electronic Communications Protection Act states its illegal to intercept or read an email when it's "in transit" between the sender and the recipient. Not sure what that means? Grasping this requires a little technical knowledge about email and how it works. When you hit "send," be it in Outlook or Gmail, the email is not sent straight to the person in question; instead, the email is first sent to your email provider's server. From there, your email is directed to the server of the recipient, if different. From that server your email is finally sent to the recipient. All this can happen in a few seconds, but it is during this in-between time that your email is protected by a federal law.
On your computer
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Files stored on your computer or on discs in your house are protected by law from unauthorized access. This means someone who physically breaks into your house and reads your email is breaking the law and someone that hacks onto your computer over the Internet is breaking the law.
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In the cloud
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Here's where it gets more complicated, legally. Whether you know it or not, you have data "in the cloud." If you use online email services such as Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail, your information is stored on the servers of the company that provides the email account. This means the information is not physically in your house, so it is up to your email provider to protect your data. Be sure to carefully read the user agreement of your webmail service to see if you're legally protected from unauthorized access. Also know that in most cases you will have to report any unauthorized access to the company offering the services rather than the law enforcement.
Employers and government
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The government and, in some cases, your employer has the legal right to review your email? In the age of the Patriot Act, some government officials can access your email without a warrant---a subpoena often will suffice. Depending on employment rules, your company probably has the right to review all emails you send from your company computer.
Security
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The law may not always protect you, so it is a good idea to protect yourself. If you keep your email on your own computer, be sure to run an up-to-date firewall, anti-virus protection and anti-spyware protection to close common pathways hackers might use to get at your data. Never send sensitive information, such as your Social Security or credit card numbers, over email. If you use a webmail service such as Gmail, be sure to routinely change your password and avoid using the same password on a number of sites. It's all common sense, really: you keep your cash in the bank and your important documents in a locked box at home, so don't leave your online information vulnerable.
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