Lim Boon Siang, 27, an administrator, had pleaded guilty last week to two charges under the Computer Misuse Act.

He was at his Ang Mo Kio home on Jan 21 when he accessed and changed the password of Ms Shirley Ang Shu Hui's e-mail accounts without her consent. She made a complaint to the police two days later.

The couple had met when they were studying at the Singapore Institute of Management. They broke up last December.

Between 2001 and 2004, Ms Ang, now 23, had registered three personal e-mail accounts. In 2003, she used one of them to register for an account with social networking portal Friendster.

Lim knew of her four accounts but she had never allowed him to access them.

In January this year, someone posted lewd comments about Ms Ang on her blog.

Lim's lawyer, Mr G. Dinagaran, told the court when Lim found out, he felt 'protective' towards his ex-girlfriend. He said he wanted to access her four accounts to find out who was the culprit.

In mitigation, Mr Dinagaran said Lim told Ms Ang about the new password after he had changed it, as he realised it was wrong to do so.

He used one password for the four accounts. No reason was given as to why he changed the password.

District Judge Liew Thiam Leng, who took six other similar charges into consideration, noted that Lim had no malicious intent in this case.

Lim could have been fined up to $10,000 or jailed for up to three years or both on each charge.

elena@sph.com.sg