Loi n° 2018-026, accès et maintien frauduleux à un système informatique
Loi n° 2018-026 du 07 décembre 2018 sur la cybersécurité et la lutte contre la cybercriminalité art. 8 (accès et maintien frauduleux à un système informatique)
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force.
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 5 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not access, or remain present in, a computer system without right, including a system reached over the internet.
- Reading a public, unauthenticated page has not itself been held to violate this provision, but the statute does not expressly limit the offense to defeating a security measure.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
Six months to two years' imprisonment and a fine of XOF 5,000,000 to XOF 20,000,000, or either penalty alone (art. 8, first paragraph); doubled if the access caused a serious disruption or interruption of the system, and raised to five years' imprisonment and XOF 15,000,000 to XOF 60,000,000 where the victim is the Togolese State.
Penalty structure
Base tier for a first offense against a non-State system; the same article doubles this fine (alongside the prison term) for a serious disruption, and sets a separate XOF 15,000,000 to XOF 60,000,000 range where the Togolese State is the victim.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 5 September 2026
- Minimum
- 5,000,000
- Currency
- XOF
- Fixed cap
- 20,000,000
What it reaches
Obligation class
Access restriction
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 8 punishes any person who, without right, accesses or attempts to access, or remains or attempts to remain, in all or part of a computer system, with six months to two years' imprisonment and a fine of XOF 5,000,000 to XOF 20,000,000, or either penalty alone. The penalty doubles where the access results in a serious disruption or interruption of the system.
It rises to five years' imprisonment and a fine of XOF 15,000,000 to XOF 60,000,000 where the offense is committed to the detriment of the Togolese State.
The provision's trigger is access without right rather than the circumvention of a security measure, so unlike a statute that requires infringing an access control, its plain text does not on its own resolve whether reading a public, unauthenticated page falls inside or outside the offense, and no reported Togolese decision has addressed the question.
Article 9 of the same law separately punishes destroying, hindering, falsifying, disrupting or interrupting the functioning of a computer system, and article 10 separately punishes introducing, deleting, altering, destroying, extracting or intercepting computerised data, each with three to five years' imprisonment and a fine of XOF 25,000,000 to XOF 100,000,000; both are aimed at interference with or extraction of data from a system rather than passive reading of a page it makes public.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
Journal Officiel de la République Togolaise, numéro spécial du 07 décembre 2018