Ask HN: Is it illegal to hijack the result of an online poll?

2 pointsfoobarfoofoo2 comments

Just for fun I'm trying to hijack the result of an online poll. Security of that thing is ridiculous: you just need to send POST to the server and use different IP's to keep your right to vote.

Assuming I'm not DoS'ing the server and no terms of service have been agreed do you think is illegal to do so (in your country at least)?

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These are unscientific polls, and if that poll does not mention it, they do not care much anyway.

If there is a funny aspect in the poll, those from 4chan might pick it up and abuse it for you.

Regarding legality, it is up to local cybercrime laws. In practice, you may get in trouble as a knee jerk reaction to some unexpected and unfortunate outcome of the poll.

In the US, almost anything you do on a computer can probably be interpreted as "illegal" under the CFAA, given a sufficiently ignorant and/or over-zealous prosecutor. If you reside in the US, be very careful.

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