‘Log in to main account and view email’ employee… Law: Not guilty as it was not an infringement of secrets

Suspicion of accessing portal mailbox without permission
Employee: “I only checked the list for recruitment purposes”
Court: “Information shared…there was no intention”

A man in his 20s who was indicted on charges of logging into another person's account without permission and checking email was found not guilty.

On February 20, the Ulsan District Court acquitted Mr. A, a children's center teacher who had been put on trial on charges of violating the Information and Communications Network Act.

In 2021, Mr. A was accused of logging into the portal site account of Mr. B, the representative of the children's center where he worked, without permission and viewing the email list.

At the time, Mr. A was found to have committed this crime in response to a colleague's request to check the list of applicants during the process of recruiting new employees.

Mr. A denied the charges. The reason was that the CEO shared the account with employees for work reasons, and the account was set to auto-login, so anyone could access it. At the same time, he emphasized that he only checked recruitment-related emails and did not read personal emails.

The court ruled that Mr. A was not guilty. The court ruled that “the victim shared her ID and password with employees, including the defendant,” and that “there was no intention that the defendant did not have legitimate authority to access the email or invaded the account by exceeding the permitted authority.”

He added, “I only accessed the email and checked the list, but did not click on a specific email, so it cannot be said that I found out the content.” He added, “Whether or not the resume was accepted cannot be considered a matter to be kept secret.”

Attorney Jeon Hyeon-joo of Daeryun Law Firm, who represented Mr. A, explained, “The crime of detecting contents of electronic records, etc., is established when the contents of an electronic record that has become a secret device are discovered using technical means,” adding, “In this case, the court accepted that a crime cannot be established because the email was accessed while automatically logged in without any method such as hacking.”

Digital Content Team

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Employee who ‘Logs into main account to view email’… Law: “It is not an infringement of secrets.” Not guilty (Shortcut)