French hacker Francois Cousteix aged 23, aka Hacker-Croll, has received a five month suspended sentence after being convicted of breaking into the Twitter accounts of celebrities like Lily Allen and public figures like President Barack Obama.

Cousteix could have faced two years in prison for computer hacking however, the court accepted his given reason for hacking into the accounts. Cousteix said that he wanted to hack into the Twitter accounts to warn the public about the data security risks posed by social networking. According to Cousteix, he used publicly available information to guess at the passwords to the accounts, showing how easily online data can become accessible to someone with determination.