Is it legal to view a site&#39;s directories/files/bare index that contain sensitive information? I've been getting into cyber security and learned there are certain sites that have their directory browsing enabled, like a URL that contains the files/folders of a site that contain content, which means you can go back a few directories and possibly see stuff like photos of content that you would have had to pay for browsing the site normally or even sensitive information like photos of user's ID's. Is it even legal to view those files (U.S), since anyone with a browser and the right URL can access them?
If the operators of a site post them in such a way that anyone with a browser can access them, with no login or other security precaution required, and not even any notice that the files are confidential, they are implicitly inviting anyone to view them, and thus it is legal to do so. There was a case where a site owner gave specific notice to a user not to access the site, and blocked the user's IP. When the user hired a proxy service to get around the blockage, this was held to be unauthorized access, a crime under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse act). But in that case the individual notice was considered essential to the applicability of the act. That case was Craigslist, Inc v. 3Taps, Inc et al, 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2015). See also This Wikipedia article and thisJaxEnter article. As the Wikipedia article put it: Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) was a Northern District of California Court case in which the court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Note that in this case web scraping was apparently impacting the craigslist site.
The only real recourse you have is to contact the webhost and try to convince them your content is really yours and file a DMCA Takedown request. How you convince them might be an issue; do you have any old screenshots? Original photos? Any proof that the content and photos are yours? The webhost appears to be https://datacamp.co.uk/ , unless the DNS is being proxied, since DNS points to CloudDNS https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dns:marksmayo.com NZ and UK are members of the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, so there don't appear to be any arguments about not applying copyright law. You willingly gave up the domain, so you have no recourse or valid reason to try and regain ownership of the domain. You could try and contact the new owner of the domain by filing a complaint via the abuse email listed by the domain registar at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?&amp;domain=marksmayo.com But they may not do anything, even if you can prove a copyright violation, since they only handle the domain registration and not the webhosting. How they got the content is another question: who was your webhost when you owned the site? Datacamp? Did they not delete it when you closed your account? How did the new owner come to get it?
If that which you describe in your comment ( Facebook post as only basis for warrantless search) is, and can be shown, to be the only basis for the search, and there was no evidence of a crime in plain view when they arrived.....then yes, it is likely the search and all evidence acquired from the search would be excludable. As to whether the individual could still be prosecuted, that depends if a case could be built independent of the evidence collected during the search.
1a - Where is US government website where person can requesting free copy of their MIB (online or by phone). And I don't mean MIB.com. I am looking for government website that would reference something like MIB, i.e. for instance Federal Trade Commission website references annualcreditreport.com There isn't one. The right to medical information is a right you have vis-a-vis individual heath care providers and insurance companies that have your medical information. The U.S. government does not have access to this information and doesn't facilitate you getting this information, except that you could sue in federal court to get it if the person required by law to provide it to you didn't give it to you. (The fact that the U.S. government does not have access to individual health information is one of the reasons that major medical research studies that capture a sample of the entire population of a country for a given time period are often done instead in foreign countries that have comprehensive medical records databases. In the U.S., the best possible alternative is often to look at the medical records of servicemen and veterans who received government provided health care, or to create very large voluntarily long term studies of populations such as doctors and nurses.) Even in the case of credit reports, the government website merely ends up directing you to a private sector website maintained by credit reporting websites and is not a government website. 1b - Where is US government website where person can requesting free copy of their other personal records (online or by phone) You can apply to the U.S. government via one of the IRS websites to get transcript of your past tax returns for a certain number of years. You can apply to the Social Security Administration to get your earnings history for Social Security purposes and I think that can be done from their website or by telephone. There is a U.S. government website called PACER at which you can get copies of all non-sealed filings in all federal court cases, and all filings in court cases to which you are or have been a party. There is U.S. government website at which you can ascertain whether or not a building, including your home, is in a flood plain. There is a U.S. government website that allows you to locate people who are currently incarcerated in federal prison. There is a U.S. government website that allows you to review census data from time periods when almost everybody is dead. I believe that old immigration records can also be accessed in this manner. There is a phone number at the Veteran's Administration where veterans can ask about their personal veteran's benefits. I'm not sure if that have a website from which they can do so yet. Last time I checked, a long time ago, they didn't. There are several websites and phone numbers that federal employees can access to get their personnel record type information. This is absolutely not a comprehensive list. It shouldn't be hard for you to research yourself the current web address for these sites which changes fairly often anyway. You can get many other kinds of information from the U.S. government that is about you via the Freedom of Information Act (a.k.a. FOIA), but generally speaking, this information isn't available via a website or by phone. Usually, you have to request it in a written letter or application unless a new website allowing you to do this that I don't know about has been created recently.
First of all, Google's TOS says we reasonably believe that your conduct causes harm or liability to a user, third party, or Google — for example, by hacking, phishing, harassing, spamming, misleading others, or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you And you ask: But suppose a researcher, say based in UK, managed to work around them, get a big amount of data from Google searches and use it to publish some research. You're confusing methods with results. Someone uses methods to get a result, but if the results are not legal, the methods are usually illegal, too. Would the above depend on how they circumvented Google's checks (i.e., by using lots of proxies)? The words &quot;or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you&quot; means just that; it does not give any wiggle room for the actual method used to scrape. Could they get, theoretically, into trouble? Very much so. The researcher would have at least civil liability, and possibly criminal exposure. Would they, practically? Google can be very not kind to people who break their TOS. And Google has lots of money to spend on lawyers and court fees to enforce their TOS. Google would probably be able to easily prove the data came from their servers, and would probably have server logs to help prove it. And see user6726's answer for specific legal citations in the US and UK.
It could be. Accessing any web page is subject to whatever the terms of use are for the page, and if those terms state that the page may only be accessed from within the US, then accessing the page from outside the US is a violation of the TOS (hence use is infringing): see 2.4(h) of the Netflix EULA. There are EU rules that override such terms, within the EU. The usual way to circumvent technological location-restrictions (where the web page says "I'm sorry, I can't let you do that") is to use a VPN and pretend to be somewhere else. Use of a VPN is not per se illegal in most countries (there are exceptions), but using it to circumvent geo-blocking may be. Again returning to the point that the TOS may itself say "No you may not", the interesting question is what to conclude if there is no such statement, for example I did not see anything in the PBS TOS that restricts access to the US (I didn't look very deeply). Terms of service can't be secret: you can't be held to following rules that you cannot reasonably know of. If you attempt to access a page that uses un-announced geo-blocking technology and it informs you that you can't use the page because of your location, then you have effectively been put on notice that there is a rule. If you happen to be using a VPN and access an un-announced, (reasonably) undetectable geo-blocked site, that would not be a breach of the terms (because you have not been put on notice that location is a term of use).
No. This would not be illegal. There is considerable case law holding that a mere link to a website is not itself actionable, either civilly or criminally, for wrongdoing by the operator of the destination site. This said, even though it would not be a breach of copyright, per se, in some circumstances one could imagine the link, together with other actions to give the link more context and substance (e.g. a revenue sharing agreement with the illegal website operator based upon clicks referred from your site) to support a claim of civil conspiracy to violate copyright laws, or even a criminal conspiracy to do so. But, it would be very hard to make out a civil or criminal conspiracy claim against someone who maintained a &quot;warning&quot; site. Similarly, it would not be actionable to have a webpage that linked to a website that used to be legitimate when the webpage was set up, if the link then rotted and the site at that address was replaced by a website that streamed videos illegally or promoted child pornography, without your knowledge.
Invasion of privacy and false light torts would probably not be applicable here. Very few states have adopted the false light tort because of its conflict with First Amendment principles and there was no agreement or even request to keep the text private. The copyright issue is trickier. First all, the TOS may provide that the copyright belongs to the text service provider or that there is a license. But, even in the absence of an express license, sending someone a message which is equivalent to sending them a letter, probably gives rise to an implied license that the person to whom it is sent can use the message that arises merely from the act of sending it without restriction or qualification. Implied license and fair use also heavily overlap. Publishing the text exactly as it was sent to you protects you from defamation liability because it is true. On the whole it would be extremely unlikely for there to be any legal liability for publishing a text from someone that they sent to you. Of course, one can imagine exceptions. If the person receiving the text was in an attorney-client relationship, or priest-parishioner making confession relationship, or was communicating regarding classified national security matters, or there was a non-disclosure agreement in place, among other possibilities, an evidentiary privilege and duty of confidentiality could apply and disclosing the material without the permission of the privilege holder could breach a duty of confidentiality and give rise to liability. If the picture was a nude picture of a minor, there could be a criminal and/or civil liability issue, and some states have also made posting "revenge porn" a criminal offense and/or a basis for civil liability. If the disclosure was effectively a way to facilitate insider trading that could be a problem. If the contents of the text were accurately transmitted but known to be false and were disseminated without disclosure of its falsity for the purpose of defrauding a third party, that could be a problem. But, no facts that obviously flag any exception are identified in the question. The mere fact that the posting may be embarrassing, or hurt someone's reputation, or was made without someone's express consent, in general, would not be a basis for liability.