A fake BP twitter account was created that is parodying the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that happened last month. At first, many people were horrified at the lighthearted and negligent attitude that they though was coming from the real BP. Now, most people realize it is a parody, and the article above offers some suggestions on how to maximize its political and charitable power. It has about 50,000 followers, while the real BP twitter accounts have only around 6,000. This raises questions about identity "theft." Although this is not like identity theft to access bank account information, this is still a type of fraud. If the fraud is not for personal gain, but, for example, simply satirical, where does it fall legally? It is still published online, for anybody to see, and assumes legitimacy (or did when it started). Now that the twitter account has received media attention, it is selling t-shirts, the proceeds of which will go towards helping the oil spill. This is similar to "grey hat" hacking, which falls between "white hat" legal, fun hacking, and "black hat" illegal, malicious hacking. Although this is technically fraud, it is helping the cause it is satirizing.
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