by Rodrigo Borges Carneiro
April 04, 2013
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Last year the personal computer of a famous Brazilian actress was hacked and intimate photos of the beauty have found their way to the Internet. The whole episode, specially after the public in general realized that our books had no specific law to deal with this kind of problem, motivated Congress to move and approve a Law to deal with the invasion of a computer.
Law 12,737 has entered into force yesterday and will be an important tool to combat this type of criminal practice in the digital environment. It criminalizes conduct specific to this environment and imposes penalties that may discourage behavior such as invasion of computers or computing device.
The Law protects data and sensitive information, but does not exempt the computer owner from taking basic precautions like having a security mechanism, even if a password.
The best advice to maintain the security and privacy of intimate photos or data and information is still taking the good and old preventive measures. Basic care such as regularly changing passwords, avoiding obvious passwords and not having an unprotected Wi-fi network is still important.