That’s what’s interesting. My state has a law going into effect soon that covers requesting the removal of facial data, but at the moment it hasn’t started yet. Presumably once it goes into effect, Clearview would be legally obligated to remove my data.
Also, forgive me for asking this dumb question, but what do you mean by send a letter with a CD? What does CD stand for? Is it some kind of certificate of receipt? I tried looking it up, but didn’t find much about it.
Also, in terms of asking what they have on me, I have basically been unable to have any communication with them. Others seem to have the same issue. In general, Clearview takes months to respond to any sort of email (at least for me). I sent one semi-recently from a different email address. Hopefully they respond to that.
Do you know if anyone has ever responded to one of these letters with "If you want to access our data we need a signed order from a judge" and how that played out?
Shouldn't you send such communication by certified mail?
A company behaving that shady will have no qualms to claim that they never received your communication and a copy of your own mail may not pass legal muster.
Not a lawyer, etc. But I, for one, would be super paranoid with such creeps. Even if it costs me a few bucks.
Yes, the apparent standard practice of just saying "We haven't received a letter" and then removing it if one is received makes no sense to me. Much better to have something you regularly update, and then stop updating it. The government could nab you for deleting something, but they might have trouble forcing you to update your declaration with false information.
Hi- thanks for all the questions, since we are just launching- I am happy to get feedback because I want the service to be easy to understand.
I'll start with the safety of your information. Any critical customer information that a customer needs to enter or access is stored on a separate and encrypted server. Nobody except the CEO and tech lead have access to the server.
The letters are sent as hard copies to an employee from CIVILIZE who collates and sends the registered letters. Our team works closely and there is a protocol for how the letters are handled.
There is always the option to send the letters to the collection agency via registered mail yourself. The copies of letters are kept on the encrypted server.
The template letters are the ones provided by the consumer financial protection bureau to verify a debt, dispute a debt, cease and desist, and give instructions for future contact. You can't import your own templates- but if you have a good one, you can always contact our support team because perhaps we would add it.
For those who sign up for our paid service, they send the registered letter with instructions for contact and inform their creditor that the only way to be reached is through CIVILIZE email platform.
From that point on, the communication between creditor and client happen like a normal email service (like gmail) it is not visible to our staff (except our lead tech) unless it is flagged by the client as being abusive.
Our protection resources besides the letters and email are being rolled out so it isn't public yet.
We are not marketing this for "credit repair" as much as we are trying to address the pain of being harassed and abused. This is something that people seem to understand easily.
What I don’t understand is how their vendor even got the names of the recipients. That is the violation of privacy, the mailed letters are only the symptom of a poorly designed system.
"These days they have streamlined online applications for writing to them, but I suggest that you only send them paper letters. This is a really weird thing for a technologist to suggest, but when you send paper letters, you can establish and own a “paper trail.” When you type words into their godawful web applications and hit submit, you will likely fail to retain a copy of those words and fail to retain records about what they told you (exactly) and when. This will complicate your resolution with them. Communicate with them only over postal mail. Keep a log of every mail you send (including what you said) and when it was sent; keep a copy of every letter they send to you and when it was sent. You don’t need physical copies; digital is fine. I like organizing all of mine on a per-incident basis in Dropbox."
YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SEND LETTERS WITH 'USPS RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED.' (It's the green card you get at the post office and once the recipient receives your letter, you will get a green card in the mail serving as proof of delivery and acceptance.) This is the lowest costing form of legal proof for a paper trail. Well worth it. I use it all the time and I learned this from my dad who has spent his life practicing law.
I used to write those letters when I worked in insurance. They had to be reviewed by legal, needed to make it clear what level of threat was involved without divulging certain kinds of info and only occurred when an actual breach of some sort had happened.
In my case, it was usually not a computer issue. It was usually a case of "We sent a check or letter to the wrong address" and it was weirdly common for the reason to be "Because your dad, brother or cousin with a similar name and address also has a policy with us and you people are nigh impossible to tell apart."
And we couldn't say anything like that.
Point being that divulging the issue comes with risks of making the problem worse. So it's not as simple and straight forward as it seems.
Right. If I request they snail mail me a copy of some document, they are free to reject the request. However, if they send me the document, I am free to tear off pieces or color on it with crayons.
This is pretty nifty. Though sadly many of these constitute "you can send a letter asking them for it", which is somewhat painful. That being said, it would be intriguing to see what response I got back in a few cases, especially since I'm in the US, and they aren't really obligated to respond.
What's the worst that can happen if you reply to this letter with incomplete information?
I imagine the client will then send you another letter, to which you reply that you've already sent the information. And so on.
In the end, the client may sue you. But in that situation, you make the effort of deleting the information you said you didn't have, and you win the case.
Opening a dialogue about this would have been the professional approach. Blasting you with a long list of demands means they are trying to bully you. Cease and desist letters are just a way of trying to scare you into doing what they want so they don't need to do things the hard way. I'd recommend asking a lawyer if they have a case to make against you, just to be safe. But if they don't, this letter means nothing.
Letter is rubbish. They wouldn't have the legal power to enforce anything. We received the same letter today.
For a number of reasons the letter is useless, and you shouldn't really do anything.
1. It's an email letter, legal letters for any court action need to delivered Registered post, so proof you have received it. This is relatively expensive to do. Especially at the scale they would like to do it at.
Also, forgive me for asking this dumb question, but what do you mean by send a letter with a CD? What does CD stand for? Is it some kind of certificate of receipt? I tried looking it up, but didn’t find much about it.
Also, in terms of asking what they have on me, I have basically been unable to have any communication with them. Others seem to have the same issue. In general, Clearview takes months to respond to any sort of email (at least for me). I sent one semi-recently from a different email address. Hopefully they respond to that.
reply