Fibbing on Facebook to be a crime soon

Washington, Nov 19: The United States Department of Justice is planning to introduce a new law to prosecute those who use fake names on the world's most popular social networking site - Facebook or those lying to someone in online dating websites.

Sources said that misdoing on social networking sites could be a federal crime under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 1986, an anti-hacking law passed long back before the emerging of social networking sites. Meanwhile, people are urging lawmakers to re-write the law and want the government to punish those online mischief makers same as to that of criminal hackers.

According to Fox News, with the new law, a person could be prosecuted for violating the user agreement in a social networking site under anti-hacking law. Critics of the law point most frequently to a section that imposes penalties on anyone who knowingly 'exceeds authorized access" on a computer to obtain information.

OneIndia News