Most of us try to stay on the right side of the law—arrests, investigations, and jail time can seriously crimp styles and complicate vacation plans. That doesn’t mean we always agree with the laws on the books, or understand their purpose—or even realize those laws exist in the first place. While you might not knowingly break laws, there’s a very good chance you have broken some recently, and even frequently.
That’s not because you’re a criminal mastermind. It’s because there are some common, everyday things most people do that are technically illegal, whether we realize it or not. While most of the actions on this list might seem pretty innocuous to you, that doesn’t mean they’re not still very illegal, and arguing that “everyone does it” is not usually an effective legal strategy. Here are nine surprisingly illegal things you’ve probably done in your life.
Using wifi
You know you’ve done it: You’re out in the world and desperately need a wifi connection for some reason. Or you’re at home and your Internet goes down in the middle of an important project. You scan around desperately, find an unsecured network, and hop on. No harm, no foul—all you’re doing is Googling and Slacking folks.
Except it’s very likely illegal. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 makes it a federal crime to “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access.” There’s some wiggle room there due to the vintage of the law—wifi didn’t exist in 1986—and the courts haven’t officially clarified whether this applies to wifi networks, but plenty of state laws make it a crime to use someone’s private network without their express permission. So think twice the next time you hop on your neighbor’s wifi.
Public intoxication
You go out, have a few pops with friends, and decide to walk—or, in your case, stagger—home. You may have just broken the law.
That’s because public intoxication is illegal in many areas of the country. The laws are usually designed to apply to folks who are causing a disturbance of some sort, so if you’re just minding your own inebriated business you’re probably fine, mainly because people might not even notice that you’re drunk. In fact, in some cases the laws are written such that you don’t even need to be intoxicated to be charged—you only have to appear intoxicated. That’s a buzzkill, for sure.
Gambling
Do you have a weekly poker night with your friends? It’s probably totally legal—unless the host takes a “rake” or profit from the game. The rake is often what pushes a “social” (and legal) poker game in your rec room into murky legal territory. If you run a poker night with four partners that runs for 30 days consecutively and you rake $2,000 or more on at least one of those days, you might be in violation of federal gambling laws. Of course, the chances that someone is going to raid your garage due to a small-stakes poker game with friends is very low, even if you do rake $15 at the end of the night.
Password sharing
We all know that streaming services and other companies don’t really like it when you share your password and login credentials with friends and family, and that companies like Netflix are cracking down on the practice. Aside from being a clear violation of the Terms of Service you clicked through when you created your account, it’s also technically illegal. An appeals court ruled that sharing passwords violated the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 2016—but that ruling hasn’t been effectively tested in other cases yet, so there’s a chance you might walk free if you were ever charged.
Jaywalking
Jaywalking is variously defined, but generally requires pedestrians to follow traffic control signals—like Walk/Don’t Walk signs or marked crosswalks. That means that in a lot of places in this country, if you cross in the middle of the street or dodge oncoming traffic to get to the other side, you are technically breaking the law. Congrats!
Some states—California, Virginia, and Nevada—have removed jaywalking laws from their books, so you’re safe if you live there. Otherwise, think before you casually cross the street in savage violation of the law (and civilized behavior, you monster).
Unreported profits
If you’ve ever sold some stuff on eBay or other online platforms, or sold something privately in person, and you didn’t report the profits to the IRS, you may have broken the law. If you’re the sort who occasionally throws something up for sale on an app or a website to clear out the junk from your house, you probably have nothing to worry about—you probably didn’t make any “profits” in the sense of making more than you paid for the stuff, since you likely bought it all a long time ago and it was very used.
But if you realized what money folk call “gains”—you bought something for $1 and then turned around and sold it for $2—you’re breaking the law. Whether anyone cares about your $1 in capital gains is a different story, of course.
Throwing away mail
Have you ever gotten someone else’s mail and tossed it in the trash? Maybe a former tenant of your apartment, or the previous owner of your home? Well, if you threw it away, you broke the law—US Code 1702, specifically, which terms it “obstruction of correspondence.” You’re supposed to either ensure it gets to its intended recipient (unopened), or mark it clearly as incorrectly delivered and hand it back to the Post Office. Even if it’s a piece of junk mail addressed to someone who moved out in 2015, it’s still illegal to toss it.
Not updating your license
Specific laws vary, but generally speaking you’re required to update your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) whenever you change your address, so they can update your driver’s license (you usually receive a sticker with your new address that you paste on your license). The laws usually specify that you need to this in a timely manner, typically within a week or 10 days. This is the sort of thing you can get away with for a very long time, but if you get caught, you can get a citation and a fine (for example, up to $200 in Texas).
Sharing medications
If you’ve ever given a friend suffering from a bad back or other injury some old pain pills you had lying around, you’re a criminal. Put simply, you are not legally empowered to distribute a controlled substance. The whole point of a prescription is that legally-empowered people (a doctor and a pharmacist) give a specific individual (you) some drugs. You can’t transfer that prescription, and just because possession is nine-tenths of the law doesn’t mean you now own those pills and can do as you like.
Now that you know you’re a hardened criminal, it’s time to turn over a new leaf: Cross only in the crosswalks, change your Netflix password and keep it secret, and under no circumstances throw away someone else’s junk mail.
