Curiosity, jealousy or a desire to gather evidence: whatever the motivation, unauthorized access to another person's WhatsApp messages can have very serious consequences. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that spying on conversations on the app is tantamount to hacking a computer system, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The case at issue concerns a man convicted by the Court of Appeals of Messina for extracting chat and call logs from his ex-wife's phones, intending to use them in the separation case. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal, upholding the conviction. According to a report in Il Messaggero newspaper, the man had previously engaged in intrusive behavior toward his wife, to the point of being charged with private violence. In a second incident, he had recovered an old phone used for work and found screenshots of conversations and calls on it, some of them from another device the woman was still using. All of the material was then turned over to her lawyer for use in civil proceedings. For the judges, this was a clear breach of confidentiality: WhatsApp was recognized as a real “computer system”, as an application that manages sensitive data through networks, hardware and software. Access without consent, especially with protections such as passwords, constitutes a crime. Even in cases where the phone owner has temporarily provided access credentials, misuse or prolonged use beyond the limits of consent can still constitute criminal conduct.