A British man has been sentenced to six months in prison for hacking into Facebook’s central servers, in what a prosecutor called “the most extensive and flagrant incidence of social media hacking to be brought before British courts.”

Glenn Mangham, 26, claimed to be be acting as a security consultant, eager to share with Facebook how he had breached their safeguards. Mangham says he performed the same service for search engine Yahoo. His defense also made claims that the young man shows signs of Asperger’s Syndrome.

Operating from his bedroom in his parents home, Mangham possibly first hacked into the account of a Facebook employee. Reportedly, no private user data was compromised; Mangham instead took “invaluable” intellectual property, which he stored on an external hard drive.

Mangham isn’t the only person going to jail over Facebook. A 29-year-old Sarasota juror was sentenced to three days in the clink after friending the defendant. Jacob Jock claims it was a mistake, and he might have gotten away with simply being dismissed from the trial. But the judge was furious when Jock later bragged on the same social network, “Score … I got dismissed!! apparently they frown upon sending a friend request to the defendant … haha.”

What do you think? Were both these crimes worthy of hard time? Will you be more careful the next time you log on?

[via The Huffington Post and Gizmodo]

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