A forum violated their privacy policy - what do I do?

[Law123]

My jurisdiction is: California

I posted a question from an assignment on a forum help site and the university discovered it and emailed the forum site administrator to ask them if they could provide the user's personal information. The site's administrator emailed them my email which they used to track me. Now I am facing expulsion from violating the university's academic integrity policy. I went to the website and viewed their privacy policy and they say that they do not release personal info without the user's permission. They did not ask my permission. I did not even know they did it until after the university contacted me. I emailed the site administrator a few times but received no response. I saved their privacy policy as a PDF for my proof. The privacy policy has been removed from their website, I'm guessing because they got scared that they violated it. The problem is I have no information as to who the owner of the site is. The company they are registered with says they cannot give out that information. I would like to file a legal claim against the forum site but I am not sure how to proceed. Lawyers seem to be unwilling to take this case because we do not know who the site owner is.

My other question is, did the university violate some kind of federal law by asking the forum site to provide them with "any personal identifiable information"? If so, what can I do about it?

How can I sue the site for the damaged they have caused if I don't know who the site belongs to. They deleted their privacy policy and I only have their email and the PDF copy of the privacy policy with the websites address and the date the file was created. Please help!

 

[jacksgal]

Where were you logging into this website from?

 

[Law123]

I logged in from my home computer. But my information was not stolen. The site gave it out against their privacy policy. I just can't find the site owner to communicate with them because they have now deleted their privacy policy, probably because they know they violated it and will not respond to email. Plus the company they are registered with says they can't give out the contact info. Lawyers don't want to help me because this case is a bit complicated and they just want an easy case. What do I do? I don't want to leave this alone. They should not have revealed my info to the university.

 

[jacksgal]

You missed my point. Did you "ever" login from anywhere other than home? If so where? What email address did you use? What what email I mean who owned the email account yahoo, MSN (the University?) Do you see where I am going with this?

 

[Law123]

No, always from home. The email I used was under my name. The university identified me through my email because they had it on file as mine. I know, should have used a different one. Not very smart. But that's not my point. I have nothing against the university, only against the website the disclosed my email. Their privacy policy said they do not, but they violated it. Since then they removed the privacy policy from their website because i told them they would be facing legal action for violating a contract. They do not respond to any emails. I am hiring a lawyer, but I need to know what else I can do in this case. I don't have their info because it is protected by the privacy policy of the company they are registered with.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

What do you want to do - sue the site for providing your information? For how much money? One of a number of problems you face is that you have unclean hands in this problem and you'll have a difficult time going to court and showing you suffered damages as an innocent. This is in addition to your potential breach of their terms of use (uploading copyrighted materials, improper usage, etc.) - so providing your information may or may not have been a breach of their privacy policy, I don't know. No offense, but I wouldn't think that you have a winning case against the site owner for any substantial amount of money.

Regarding the school, this isn't a criminal investigation - there is no "illegal search and seizure" or arrest. They simply asked for information and received it. As far as I know, the damages for breach of a privacy policy in this instance would be civil - and you bear the burden of proof and have to deal with the issues above.

Regarding finding out the owner, they should have the information listed in their domain registration. If the company name is cloaked, the "proxy" has steps you can follow to compel them to reveal the owner of that domain and thus the operator. There are other ways to find out this information as well, usually by using various webmaster and research tools. Good luck.