Is it illegal for an ex-wife to access my facebook messages or email messages if she finds my passwords?

Yes. Change everything. If she manages to do it again, get proof and take her to court.

To be safe, change all of your passwords, on all of your accounts, on a regular basis.

What are the penalties for this and can information she obtains from my private messages be used against me in court?

If you think she might be able to get her hands on your computer, try taking it to a computer shop and have software put on that shows if anyone else has been using your computer besides you, and what they did. Or maybe you could also fix it so you have to enter a code before you can even turn it on…

She doesnt have access to my computer.. I suspect she is resetting my password and gaining access from a different place

@Underpar Yes, the information might be usable against you in court if it is relevant. And you might be in additional trouble for not turning it over during discovery if it turns out you should have done so. She might be liable for some penalties as well, but likely not enough to satisfy you.

You may have to get an order of restraint against her if you can prove it is her doing that. In this age I can only assume many judges have heard of this before.

I’m going through a divorce too- she can’t use anything she finds against you, if children are not involved. And, it’s probably going to be inadmissable anyway. And if you are already divorced, she can’t use it anyway, most probably.

I’ve been down this road too with my ex. Nothing he gathered was admissible but he used it to intimidate and stalk me and my friends. Facebook didn’t care about the unauthorized use, they have millions of people to serve so prevention is up to you.

The only surefire way to prevent access to your networking is to create a brand new email account on gmail or hotmail, use that to create a new facebook acct Set the privacy levels to highest and tell your non-mutual friends about your new account. Don’t add anyone whose activity might show up in her feed. You can keep the old account active but don’t use it to message anybody.

If you have evidence that she is accessing your accounts, you might be able to do something legal-wise, but just saying, in my experience, evidence is almighty hard to get and the payoff is negligible. It’s better to start over and be more careful in the future.

A gmail account tells you what time the account has been accessed and the address of computer/phone it’s being accessed from. I believe gmail will shut off the ability to access your account from that computer/phone.

Report hacked FB

yes it is illegal, but do you want to take her to court? You have to chang everything -including your passwords and maybe get rid of unneeded accounts.