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Is it a crime to impersonate someone else online in Mississippi?

The New Crime of “Online Impersonation” in Mississippi Not too many industries can claim double-digit growth over the past few years.  The use of computers to commit unlawful acts, including cybercrimes, cyberbullying, fraud, harassment, and other crimes continues to increase exponentially year after year.  In Mississippi’s latest attempt to curb the tide of online criminal activity, on July 1, 2011 it became illegal to impersonate another “actual person” on the internet in Mississippi. The New Law The law, located at Miss. Code Ann. § 97-45-33, makes it a misdemeanor to “knowingly and without consent impersonate another actual person through or on an

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Mississippi Crime of the Week – Posting Injurious Messages (Email, Facebook, etc.)

As technology advances, so does the opportunity to violate the rights of others by committing crimes in cyberspace.  This week we discuss a seldom-used law on Mississippi’s books that makes it advisable to reread every email, text message, blog post, or Facebook update you intend to publish before you hit the send button. It is against the law in Mississippi to “post a message for the purpose of causing injury to any person through the use of any medium of communication, including the Internet or a computer, computer program, computer system or computer network, or other electronic medium of communication without

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Mississippi Crime of the Week – Cyberstalking

The general definition of cyberstalking is the use of the Internet, e-mail, or other electronic communications to “stalk” another person.  Stalking – a separate crime in itself – involves willful, malicious, or repeated harassment of another person, or threats against another person made with the intent to place that person in fear of death or bodily injury.  The rapid advance of computers and the Internet as a large part of our personal and professional lives has added another dimension to the existing crime of stalking, and so the state of Mississippi responded in 2003 with one of the country’s first cyberstalking laws. In

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