The recent verdict against Lori Drew, who was found guilty in three misdemeanour counts for attaining illicit access to the renowned social-networking platform, would have a profound impact on internet usage in general.
As of now, people tend to ignore websites’ ‘Terms of Services’ column, and often feed fake information about their marital status, age, and weight, in their dating profiles, but this could well become an offence in foreseeable future, and could even result in jail sentences.
Though Drew somehow managed to escape conviction on felony accusations, she could face three years in jail, or penalties up to $300,000, for introducing an online harassment campaign that resulted in a suicide of a teenager.
Back in 2006, the 49-year-old woman had created a fake MySpace account for a fictional boy, “Josh Evans”, in order to take revenge from a 13-year old girl, Megan Meier, for reportedly insulting her daughter Sara.
Followed by spell of humiliations from the fictional character “Josh”, Megan, who had history of depression, had finally committed suicide in October 2006.
The story has raged the issue of creating fake accounts on websites for illicit purposes, and has called for enforcing new cyber-bullying laws, which could significantly check recurrence of such cases.
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