[CWuestefeld]

Upvote. This is precisely analogous to the following "brick-and-mortar" situation:

You notice that some folks in your town aren't locking the doors of their houses when they leave. So you go to each of those houses (when they're not there), walk in the front door, and tack a note to the first wall you encounter, telling them that they really ought to lock their doors.

The next day you go back and check their locks. For those that are still unlock, you go into their bedroom and mess up their sheets (being careful not to look around too much lest you notice some "marital aids", since you're not that kind of guy), so they can see that someone's really coming into their house.

It's pretty clear that you've violated any number of laws, morals, and societal values in the physical world. Why, in the virtual world, do you think that in doing so you're a white knight?

[gloshuertos]

Well, I never called myself a white knight, but that's beside the point.

If someone breaks into your Facebook account, bad things can happen, but none that (directly) involve physical harm. If someone enters your home, they could easily cause you physical harm (and in many jurisdictions you'd be well within your rights to shoot them).

Your analogy is flawed because a person's home is not analogous to their Facebook account. Their car might be -- and I don't think opening an unlocked car door and leaving a note on the dash is wrong.

It's like when people equated Amazon's revoking of 1984 to breaking into a customer's house and taking the book off the shelf. It's fearmongering, and isn't an accurate analogy.

[dinedal]

> Your analogy is flawed because a person's home is not analogous to their Facebook account. Their car might be -- and I don't think opening an unlocked car door and leaving a note on the dash is wrong.

Are you serious? If someone did that to me I would feel terribly violated! Even if I forgot / just thought I lived in a neighborhood with human decency, that is wrong on so many levels.

Trespassing by accessing someone else's property, home, car, or virtual, is wrong. Harm is harm, physical or not, and you can cause plenty of harm by accessing someone's facebook account, embarrassing them to friends or co-workers for starters.

[CWuestefeld]

Your analogy is flawed because a person's home is not analogous to their Facebook account. Their car might be

These are your opinions, your values. You've got no business with (a) deciding the value of a person's virtual identity and data; nor (b) weighing that against your value for the education about greater security.

You might be right -- FOR YOUR PERSONAL VALUES. But it's simply none of your business how another person would judge this in the balance. Your beneficiaries/victims have every right to decide for themselves that the security afforded by the current systems are sufficient for the risks. And the fact that their decision makes it easier for you to teach them a lesson does not give you the right to do so.

[compactdisk2]

ehh... I would strongly disagree. I think it would be a fairly universal opinion that having your Facebook account violated is favorable over having your home broken into, even if nothing is stolen or damaged.

I would agree that there are some ethical problems with his actions, but this is far from being ethically analogous to the whole break-in scenario.