internet
Illegal to view someone&#39;s private social media?
<p>Say someone has set their  Instagram to private, or their Twitter to protect Tweets, etc.</p>

<p>Assume, somehow, someway I manage to bypass this <strong>without hacking their account.</strong></p>

<p>Given that this may be against terms, would anything actually be against the law in doing this, given that I do not hack the person's account or any other accounts/servers in the process?</p>

<p>Let's assume what you mean by "somehow" is that you happened to learn of the user's password (and let's not assume that you engaged in interception of communication a.k.a. wiretapping, which is a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511" rel="nofollow">separate crime 18 USC 2511</a>). <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2701" rel="nofollow">18 USC 2701</a> makes it a crime to "accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided...and thereby obtains... authorized access to a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage". I think the problem is that "hacking" is not actually a well-defined term: there is no law against "hacking".</p>
