Possible to prove who's broken into a yahoo email acct??
 

My fiance's ex-wife (we believe it to be his ex anyway) has broken into his yahoo email account. How can he go about proving it was her? (Esp if it was done from a public place, like a university library) Is there a way to find out the IP addy that the change was initiated from? And finally have any of you ever heard of someone having charges filed against them and a judgment actually being given for "hacking" into a private party's email account for the purpose of snooping?

Thank you so much for your help!

If any emails were sent, then it is possible to find out the IP address. If not, then you will have to ask Yahoo! Mail for help, as they will certainly be able to tell you any information they have about the time, IP address, and what messages were read from various times the email account was accessed. If it was done from a public place like a library, then it would be much harder to prove who did it. You would have to check the library to see if they have logs of who was on which computer at what time. Check out the Yahoo! Privacy Feedback and the Incident Form for when people try to assume your identity.

I'm not sure if there is any precedence for legal consequences to email snooping, but I do know that it is illegal.

What we've found out since my original post .....
 

Thank you so much for your response....I thought I'd give you an update on what's happened so far (who knows, it might help someone else in a situation like this as well). We contacted Yahoo! by email (which got us no where....we got nothing but a generic reply pretty much just saying that they received our email). So after talking to a couple of local internet guys, a district attorney friend, customer service at his ISP and at Yahoo! we where told that it would take a subpoena for Yahoo! or his ISP release what IP address the password change originated from. I'm not certain exactly who he talked to at the police station (the attorney friend said to contact the complaint division at the prosecuting attorney's office or the deputy prosecutor) but the guy that he spoke with informed him that what she had done was a misdemeanor, that he would send a subpoena to Yahoo! and his local ISP, and then she would be arrested and her computer seized. ((I realize this might seem a little extreme, but this is actually the THIRD time she's hacked his email addresses and it's getting to be extremely tiresome))

(Just fyi) a few things he took to the police station....evidence that she's done this sort of thing in the past, the email to the alternate email address which included the date/time that the password was changed, proof that the email acct that was hacked was in fact his, ISP customer service phone number, and finally Yahoo! customer service phone number (which was harder than hell to find!! LOL)

If anyone is curious as to what that Yahoo! customer service phone number is....it's 408-349-7572. There are a couple others that might be useful as well, they are 561-988-2621 & 212-381-6800 (Yahoo! in FL & NY).

Anyway, like I said, thank you Very much for your reply vee_ess ...I really appreciate it!

Wow, I'm surprised Yahoo! even has a customer service phone number haha. That's cool pharmd, keep us updated on the situation once and awhile, it sounds very interesting. It seems a lot of people come across this type of situation, I know a couple myself but nothing ever gets done.

Udate...
 

I just wanted to give an update as to how this all played out....After the detective at the police station sent a subpoena to Yahoo! and his ISP, it didn't take them long at all (just a couple of days) to get the information back to him. And as we suspected all along, it was her. When the detective went her house to confront her, her defense was that 'she didn't know it was against the law' (yeah right!?!) ...Anyway, he confiscated her computer and found out that apparently what she Really wanted was to find out about ME (creeped me out when I found out that the only stuff she'd printed out of his email was about me...nothing about their legal battle, his financial info, etc...nope, just stuff about me :o ) So the long and short of it is that she's now accused of "computer tampering" which is a misdemeanor. She'll have to appear in court and it will be on her record. I'm just hoping that that will be enough to deter her from doing it in the future!

Wow, I'm glad it worked out good. That sounds like one crazy b****. :o

Re: What we've found out since my original post .....
 

I always wondered about that...cool to know...They will actually released the info right away (as I read on the next post) upon a subpoena...that's nice to know. :)

well they will release it upon a subpoena because.... they have to!

It's nice to hear (from a personal privacy standpoint) that they don't just give that info out.

Does the word Duh, mean anytihing to you... :)

It's nice to hear (from a personal privacy standpoint) that they don't just give that info out.[/quote]

If you read the posts...you have a hard time getting a hold of them period...so, yeah, it seems safe... :)

just read this...that's pretty amazing, that story. never thought it would be possible to get that kind of info.