Is this considered hacking?

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by knoxgarden

Just remember to write it down somewhere. I use an address book I tuck away out of sight.

For that you can use keepass, you only need to remember one password. Has a lot of cool features like password generation, browser integration using plug ins and the file is encrypted so you don't have to hide it anywhere.

[Nic.]

Originally Posted by thecoalman

Yes it is "hacking", if you wish you could pursue it through law enforcement as it's felony to access a computer resource you are not authorized to use.

As far as AOL they should just give you that information as it's your account, you could try getting back in contact with them and tell them your going to contact the police if they don't give it to you.

No it is "cracking" and yes there is a difference.


Saying you will call the police wont do anything since things like this are very common and seeing that is an email of an everyday person it will not strike any interests at any law enforcement agency.

@OP

You just learned your first lesson about how to secure an account. Make things a little harder to guess and never use something that is as obvious as high school, pet name, street name anything like that. There is a thred on here about a discussion about security questions.

//www.city-data.com/forum/inter...questions.html

[egold70]

I guess my real question is, since it doesn't appear anything was done to my emails (and since I keep no financial info in my AOL account), would it be more trouble than it's worth to try and track down who changed my password? A lawyer friend of mine told me that if I called the local police and told them, they would most likely laugh and hang up on me. He told me the only time a court or judge would force AOL or Yahoo or Google to trace IP addresses is when the crime is severe, involves theft or threats or things of that nature. Like if someone stole a potted plant from my patio and threw it into the street.....technically it can be classified as a crime, but good luck trying to get law enforcement to do anything about it.

[Nic.]

Originally Posted by egold70

I guess my real question is, since it doesn't appear anything was done to my emails (and since I keep no financial info in my AOL account),

Yes it would.

You're better off just moving along with your life taking whatever you learned from it and applying it to future actions