When a former employee leaves a company and there are issues as to whether he has wrongfully accessed the company’s computers, servers and/or e-mail accounts, in addition to traditional common law claims of breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, conversion and trespass, a litigator has in her arsenal a cause of action alleging civil violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.1 For instance, fraudulently obtaining information from a company’s e-mail server or visiting a Web site and accessing unauthorized information from it with intent to defraud may constitute a violation of the act.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted in 1984 “to provide a clear statement of proscribed activity concerning computers to the law enforcement community, those who own and operate computers, and those tempted to commit crimes by unauthorized access to computers.”2
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