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Impersonating Another Person Online is Now a Punishable Crime in California ? Penal Code Section 528.5

By Walin & Klarich

To provide a 21st Century update to an 1872 law that criminalized impersonating another, Penal Code 528.5 was enacted after the legislature and the governor passed the bill in September 2010. The law will go into effect starting January 2011. The new law was enacted to punish the act of intentionally impersonating someone else online for the purpose of fraud, intimidation, or to exact some sort of harm upon another. A person would be in violation of this new statute by using the name or personal information of another to open an email account or to create a profile on a social network like Facebook. Among the primary goals of the new law is to deter people from falsely creating accounts to post or send inflammatory photos or comments that would cause harm or embarrassment to the individual impersonated...continue to full post

Full post as published by Southern California Criminal Defense Blog on January 02, 2011 (boomark / email).