they give these people government-based email for a reason you know.

she should know better. not that it was a nice thing to do of course but compared to what she's going to face as VP its light-weight

Awesome! If Palin can't handle 4chan, I don't see how she can be ready for the vice presidency.

nice litmus test...lol

First Scientology, now Palin.. what is 4chan up to?

All that was saved was 5 screenshots, only 2 of them were of emails, and the contact list.

I wish we had gotten every email.

Im sure anon would have hacked McCain's as well, but I doubt he knows how to use email, or even a computer for that matter.

The best thing out of this was getting the daughter's cellphone number.

Seriously? That's what you'd wish for?
And yeah, I'm sure her cell phone hasn't been changed...

Some of the comments are priceless...

"Well, we can certainly count on one thing in all of this mess: John McCain won't understand any of it."

"I figured her personal email address would be something like Milfygov123...shows what I know."

"of course she uses yahoo. OF COURSE."

"I'm beginning to think she named her children after my high school senior year curriculum...Track and Trig. Now she just needs to birth a Chem and a Lit."

I must admit, I have no idea why anyone (especially around here) thinks that this is somehow acceptable.

It is not acceptable for ANYONE to hack into ANYONE else's email account! It doesn't matter who she is, who the hackers are, or why they think it's justified.

What if it was your account? What if it was the account of someone you know, and one of your emails was sitting in it?

And the line "if she can't handle this..." is BS too! This has nothing to do with being a leader, nothing to do with being in government, and nothing to do with being in the public eye! It is stealing, plain and simple.

Why you think that it's okay to steal from this woman, versus any other person on the planet, is beyond me.

That's kinda what I was getting at. If it were any other candidate, all of a sudden it would be wrong.

Maybe I'm not thinking of her as a person, more as a concept and an idea that I dislike and that's an immature mistake on my part.

Your candor is noted... and upvoted. Now please tell me you're not old enough to vote. Heehee

The government needs people like this to keep them on their toes, otherwise Palin's e-mail would be just as vulnerable as ever, and the next person to figure it out might have been a terrorist rather than a /b/tard.

As for the whole "this is stealing" argument, the courts might disagree with you on that one. The legality of the situation is questionable at best. Since the hacker didn't do anything malicious (or even hack, he just guessed her security question using publicly available information), I wouldn't be surprised if the case doesn't just get thrown out in court.

Here's a good article elaborating a bit on the controversy surrounding Palin's use of Yahoo and why she got "hacked".

BZZZZZ! Wrong, but thanks for playing.

If I go to the store and leave my car parked out front running with the keys in it and you take it, do you think THAT would be stealing? Yes of course it would.

If I walked into the library and put my wallet on the table then went to get some books and you walked out with it, would THAT be stealing? Why, yes, yes it would.

These instances, the thief WOULD get arrested and WOULD go to court and the case would NOT get thrown out. Stealing from someone who is foolish is just as much a crime as stealing from someone who is wise.

And what...you think that the btards hacked her email in order to "test" her? To find out if she was worthy of being the VP? Please. That is a complete cop out and rationalization trying to cover up the fact that this was a crime, plain and simple.

Well, I just did a bit of research online to prove you wrong, but it backfired. Apparently, accessing someone's e-mail account, even if you just guessed the password, is a felony. Makes sense.

That poor guy is so screwed.

And let me make it clear that I am not a 4chan fan. Their motivations, if I had to guess, was "4 teh lulz", not any kind of "test". Still, I think it is a good thing that this happened, because it alerted the McCain camp to the problem, and now they'll be more careful in the future.

This just confirms my gut feeling that password reminder questions that use personal information are inherently flawed.

Much as I don't want her and McCain elected, I want even less for our political process to continue to be a circus. This is ridiculous.

Whether in practise it's a felony or not and if that makes any difference depends on where the "hacker" is from. If that is not illegal in the country where he's from, he has nothing to worry about. 4chan isn't entirely American.

Much in the same way as if an American would upload a picture showing woman's bare arms in a www server that happened to be located in a Muslim country, he wouldn't have to worry about laws of the server's location. Internet blurs the lines.

As for the reasons why this was done, it's done for laughs (I cannot bring myself to use the l word), not for political reasons. Anti-scientology movement is the only thing that evolved beyond fun factor that came from 4chan.

Wikileaks has all the information that was obtained from her e-mail address. Unfortunately the site is inaccessible right now (probably too much traffic due to being mentioned in a slashdot article)

I don't think I've ever been asked what my "reminder question" is. I always fill it out when I sign up... but after that, never again. I've always wondered, what's the point?