123123 wrote:you're telling me if someone hacks an email account in a public wifi setting that they will be arrested if they go under for more than 30 mins? i find that hard to believe. the person getting hacked would at least need to contact authorities first, etc. i'm guessing authorities would come into place only after they have been notified and can build their own case.
Forget what koolpop said...
The gist of it is that you can be traced. Perhaps not in the amount of time it takes you to perform the act but as soon as you send a single packet to another network you send information about your computer that can be traced through a series of steps like those I listed previously.
Now as far as you question of would they even bother pursuing something like that, well it depends. An act passed in the 80s called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes it illegal to enter a network without authorization (permission from the owner). So if you even log in to someone else's email without there permission it is considered a crime. Now that person would have to 1. know that it occured. 2. report it to there ISP which would investigate the situation internally and if they felt appropriate may or may not inform the authorities. 3. The authorities would go through the steps of a typical investigation to find the person who committed the crime. Of course depending on who's email was accessed, how often it was accessed, how persistent the owner of the email is and so on, would determine if the authorities would put much effort into finding you. The chances of being traced and caught in the act are slim to none unless the authorities looking for you are in the same location. Now keep in mind that the email server you would be logging into is probably not in the same state as you, therefore the crime has occurred across state lines and the FBI would be responsible for investigating the matter. To be honest, if the person who owns the email reports it to their ISP and say the ISP is hotmail (micrsoft) or yahoo or gmail, they may choose to report it to authorites simply on principle. Especially Microsoft since they aren't to fond of the hacking community anyway.
There would certainly be an investigation before they came to talk to you. But if it's a local thing and they wanted to they could pick you up if they can get to you before you leave the premises. Either way, regardless of whether you've messed with the account or emails in the account, you have still committed a crime according to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and depedning on the owner of the email, the ISP and the authorities, they may or may not track you down and try to press charges. It mostly depends on the ISP though since it was their network that you have illegally accessed.
