Illegal access

ST, 1 Oct

AN administrator was fined a total of $15,000 on Monday for illegally accessing his former girlfriend's personal e-mail accounts and changing her password.

Lim Boon Siang, 27, was convicted last week of two charges under the Computer Misuse Act and had six other charges taken into consideration.

A district court heard that he changed the password of the e-mail account with the user name 'ocean_valley', without the consent of the account holder and accessed Ms Shirley Ang Shu Hui's yahoo.com.sg account from his Ang Mo Kio home on Jan 21.

They met while they were studying at Singapore Institute of Management and became a couple. They broke off last December.

Between 2001 and 2004, Ms Ang registered three personal e-mail accounts including 'ocean_valley@yahoo.com.sg'.

In 2003, she used her hotmail e-mail address 'ocean_valley' to register for her Friendster account.

Lim knew about her four accounts as she had communicated with him using the accounts. But she had never allowed him to use the accounts which were personal.

Sometime in January, someone posted lewd comments about her in her blog.

Lim claimed that he got to find out about the postings and wanted to know who had made them.

That was why he decided to access her accounts to find out more.

His lawyer, Mr Dinagaran, said Lim did not mean to cause any mischief to anyone but was merely trying to protect Ms Ang.


to the person who actually accessed my email thinking i never knew, this is for u...