A 25-year-old film buff was yesterday facing up to four years in jail but got off with probation after he admitted to hacking into people's internet accounts to download films.

Jonathan Cutajar would find a list of all the users' e-mail accounts on the Go website (his internet service provider) and then guess the password and username for each of the accounts.

Police Inspector Ivan Cilia said that this turned out to be pretty easy as people would use bits of their names as passwords and usernames.

He said he was alerted to the problem after customer complaints to the service provider prompted them to ask the police to investigate.

Defence lawyer Franco Debono asked the court to consider handing down a conditional discharge as his client has a clean police record.

But Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani said that this was out of the question and pointed out that he was facing up to four years in jail for what is effectively "stealing" other people's online accounts.

Agreeing to a proposal by the prosecution, Magistrate Padovani placed him under probation for 18 months and gave him a stern warning saying that he was playing with fire.

She told him that "just because you didn't break a window or a house door to steal a piece of gold does not mean what you were not stealing".

The magistrate then held up his police record and added: "What you did was very stupid and because of this your record is now tarnished".