Sorry, But Lying on Your Online Dating Profile Might Be a Federal Crime Katy Waldman - Slate
go to original July 24, 2013

"I don't smoke and thick hair runs in my family." (David Gannon/AFP/Getty Images)

Thanks to a nonsensical 1984 anti-hacking law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it may be a federal crime to lie on your online dating profile (not to mention Facebook). As Mother Jones explains in its list of "absurdly outdated Internet laws," the extremely baggy legislation prohibits “knowingly accessing a computer without authorization” and culling information from “a protected computer.”

The thing is, “computer” is very loosely defined - as Tim Wu writes in The New Yorker, the Justice Department has interpreted it to mean “just about any Web site.” (Wu was not writing about your OKCupid profile but rather the terrible consequences the law had on Aaron Swartz.) And how do you get “authorization” to access a website? By agreeing to its terms of service, which you probably didn’t read. Oops! You should read that stuff.

Read the rest at Slate

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