Expert: Dan Pepper - 7/4/2008

Question
The guy I'm seeing for 6 months, an IT specialist, admittedly hacked into my cellphone provider's website, accessed my phone records. He then made pdf files of them. He also hacked my Facebook account, making jpg files of pages, then emailed them to me as evidence of me cheating (i'm innocent by the way) I've saved the files to my flashdrive. I live in Tennessee, what are the laws and penalties against this type of invasion? Who should I contact?

Answer
This would appear to be a violation of the Tennessee computer crime laws indicated here:  http://law.findlaw.com/state-laws/computer-crimes/tennessee/  You can contact your local police department, who would forward the matter to the appropriate division or bureau.  Whether they have the resources and time to prosecute the matter is another story, unfortunately.

Separately, you could presumably file a civil claim against the individual for applicable trespass or harassment, however I am not familiar with Tennessee law on the matter, so you would want to retain a local attorney who is familiar with Internet law.

Dan
www.informationlaw.com