Swiss woman 'fined for hacking into cheating husband's emails'

The unnamed woman read her husband's emails when curiosity got the better of her
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Alexandra Richards21 December 2017

A woman in Switzerland has allegedly been fined for reading her husband’s password protected emails detailing evidence of his extramarital affairs.

The woman, who was not named in Swiss media reports, was charged with unauthorised intrusion into her husband’s data.

She is said to have accessed her husband’s account which he had created on their shared computer after she became suspicious.

The court heard that the couple shared numerous passwords and that some were written down next to the computer, according to the Aargauer Zeitung newspaper.

"He had been in contact with several women for a long time. I confronted him with his affairs, and he moved out of our flat relatively quickly," the woman said in a court hearing.

The original charges were brought on the unnamed woman from Aargau, Switzerland, in February. She was convicted in Muri and handed a £6813 (9,000 franc) fine and suspended on the condition of no further offences within two years.

She was fined a further £3,255 (4,300 franc) to cover police costs.

The woman was accused of intentionally and repeatedly hacking into her husband’s account and downloading material that belonged to him.

Appealing to the district court, the defence argued that the woman did not technically “hack” as she knew the password.

However, her defence was foiled when her computer search history revealed that she had checked whether or not it was illegal to access someone else’s emails before she committed the act.

The prosecution argued that this proved that she knew that her actions could potentially be illegal.

Reading a person’s password-protected data is illegal under Article 145 of the Swiss criminal code and perpetrators can face a fine and up to three years in prison.

The court upheld the woman's conviction, however the fines were significantly reduced from £7494 (9,900 francs) to 1135 (1500 francs) due to the fact that the woman had to “exert minimal criminal energy” to access the emails to do her “husband’s carelessness.”

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