Gov. Palin's Yahoo Account Hacked

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September 18, 2008

Gov. Palin's Yahoo Account Hacked

The State of Alaska’s webmail must suck, too:

“Sometime on Tuesday, an unknown hacker gained access to gov.palin@yahoo.com, an e-mail account that Sarah Palin has used for personal and possibly also state business in Alaska. The hacker posted the e-mail password to the /b/ group of 4Chan, a discussion site known as a haven for Web ‘trolls,’ and for a brief while, Palin was an open book. 4Chan readers trudged through her inbox, saving screen shots of her correspondence with friends and supporters, a list of her frequent contacts, and pictures of her family. Then, a good Samaritan reset Palin’s password, triggering a Yahoo security measure that alerted Palin to the breach. Soon after, gov.palin@yahoo.com and another account Palin has reportedly used to conduct official business—gov.sarah@yahoo.com—were deleted from Yahoo.

“Gawker has posted a few screen shots of the messages found in Palin’s account; they reveal nothing damaging about Palin, other than that she has a penchant for typing in ALL CAPS when exercised. (‘Does he want someone OPPOSED to the life issue in Congress?’ Palin wrote to Lieutenant Gov. Sean Parnell.) In a statement sent to reporters on Wednesday, the McCain campaign called the incident ‘a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law.’”

I kid about Alaska’s webmail sucking. Part of the reason for using a personal account like that appears to be circumvention of official records archiving. That’s one of those things that keeps me from being a privacy in the workplace absolutist. Sometimes things we’d like to be private or secret simply shouldn’t be. Like when you’re in government and you have a responsibility to other citizens and, not to be too dramatic about it, history.

Of course, if I wanted to conduct executive business without risking exposure, I think Yahoo is the last service I’d trust.

(Link)