Is it illegal for headteachers in the uk to look at students FB acounts?

[Megan]

Okay, i was in an assembly with my year, and the head teacher was running it, He was angry with my year and was having a go at us, the showed us pictures from our FB accounts which he had hacked into and i am scared about mine as it did something wrong, Is this illegal? I am scared about my messages and my whole FB account.
I wasn't Logged in at school, as it is not allowed.
My privacy settings are on 'Private' so no-one can see me i find them

[Red]

He didn't "hack" into it, you left it logged in.

And no, it's not illegal; if you didn't want that information available to people at the school, you probably shouldn't have gotten on there at school.


EDIT: So you're telling me that Facebook, one of the largest tech companies in the world, one of the most invested in internet security, with a department comprised of hundreds of people whose sole job it is to prevent people from hacking the website, was hacked by a school teacher in Europe?

Again. You left it logged in. You friended him. You didn't have everything set to the correct privacy settings. No one "hacked" you.

[Kieran]

No.. there are NO laws surrounding this.
He most likely just searched your names and brought up your profile/tagged photos.

The facebook account owner is the one responsible for configuring the privacy settings.

[Stefan]

it is not illegal for him them to look aat your facebook page, anything you put on the internet is open to anyone to view unless you make your profile private.

[Ian]

If he hacked your Facebook, that's illegal, but are you sure he did?

Some people may just have had their info public (or befriended the head teacher).

[Taylor]

He wouldn't have hacked in to your facebook profiles, he would have just gone on his facebook and looked you guys up. This is not illegal. All you need to do is change ALL of your privacy settings so that only your friends can view things on your profile. That way he will only be able to view your facebook if he has you added.

When you signed up to facebook you would have ticked a box to say that anything you put up is then property of facebook, and that anyone can view your profile if you have the settings on that.

[MeerkatGirl<3]

He does have a right to look at your facebook account because they have search warrant. I doubt he hacked into them though, peoples profiles might not have any privacy settings, so anyone will be able to see whats on your wall, your photos, information ect. He is not allowed ot hack into them because I don't think a search warrant that teachers have, have that kind if power. If he said he did then I would tell someone.

[Innit]

When are people going to get the message that facebook is in no way 'private'. It's a public forum, anyone can go on there and it's really not that difficult to view people's accounts. If you don't feel happy about people seeing things on your account, then don't put them out in public in the first place!

[Chip]

Just because he has people's pictures doesn't mean he hacked anything. If you can see a person's profile at all then you can save their pictures.

When did you set it to private? Facebook changes their security setup all the time (in fact they recently changed it again) so you have to check your privacy settings constantly to make sure nothing got changed.

If the teacher truly did break into a student's account then YES, that is VERY VERY illegal. It actually doesn't matter if you were logged on at school or not, accessing someone else's profile counts as unauthorized access into Facebook's servers, which the school does not own and has no rights to.

[sewrobb]

Oh dear you really so naive about anything on the internet, aren't you?

Didn't you know that ANYTHING you put up on the internet can be found with very little effort?

Everything you put up and write is recorded somewhere by all the search engines!

FB, Google, Twitter are all interlinked together.

Also Facebook is a FREE PUBLIC WEBSITE just like this one!

How many friends have you got?

Never heard of the setting Friends of Friends in the Privacy settings?

With that setting everyone knows about everyone, Wall, Info, photos etc, the lot.

Now the time line has been introduced everything you have done on FB
from the time you first had an account is there for all to see!