Here is my defence (some disguised so I can't be acused of discussing the case on a blog):
The alledged defamatory allegation was made:
the solicitors acting for them say the above is not consclusive proof and the burden of proof is on me to prove I did not send it.
- I have 380 message sent to the message board from my Yahoo account (all logged and can't be changed), none of which are defamtory
- the account was dormant (i.e. no messages sent at all from Sept 2007 to Sept 2008) - apart from the 1 defamatory - which was sent in feb 2008 from my account
- it was sent 2 days ahead of the birth of my first child - hence our priority and focus was elsewhere - this lines up with the dormancy of the account
- On a company I have no previous relationship with or knowledge about
- On a subject I have no interest in
- With no motive for me leaving this statement.
Hence I have now sent a letter to Yahoo UK asking for :-
- do you have the IP address from which the message was originally sent.
- How many hits did the message in question receive from IP addresses that can be UK verified?
- How many cases a year does Yahoo UK have impersonated identifications and third parties hacking into individual’s Yahoo accounts?
I have given them 5 days to answer.
The problem I have is the company suing me have much deeper pockets than me, have proved themselve to be a bully in the letters so far and I could end up spending £1,000s in legal costs to defend myself.
I am not confident i will get my questions answered by Yahoo UK as this is the third time I have now requested this information and they have failed to provide any response on the first 2 requests.
And my hunch is they will not have the IP address of the computer in question as the message was sent 2 years ago.
Originally Posted by alan67uk
Have you had your computer checked for spyware?
Firstly IANAL, the following is something you could do but may bnot necessarily be what you should do (which is seek professional advice)
If you send a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act (you will also need to include the obligatory fee of £10 made payable to Yahoo) then they will have no choice but to respond. Note however they are only obliged to send information on your account only. The letter should be sent recorded delivery (also keep a copy for yourself) and sent to Yahoos Data Controller.
I have included below a possible draft version of the letter you will need to send to Yahoo. It would also be worth contacting (by mail) the claimants solicitors informing them that you are awaiting successful completion by Yahoo of a properly formated SAR DPA request and as such you are unable to respond to any further communication until you are in possession of the relevant information from Yahoo. If memory serves they have 40 days to respond
skbYahoo address on left Your address on right
Date: xx/xx/xxxx
F.A.O. The Data Controller.
Re: Subject Access Request, Data Protection Act 1984 / 1998
Current Address:
Account Number/User ID:
I understand that you currently hold details of my personal and account information within your internal record systems.
I would be grateful if you would provide the following:
1. Full account details for user ID xxxx.
2. Complete usage logs of user ID xxxx. These should include, but not be limited to:
2.1. Dates and times for every instance the user xxxx actively signed into the account
2.2. The IP address of the user account for every instance of account activity
2.3 Full details of all posts to Yahoo message boards including time, date IP address and post content.
3. Copies of all documents which include any of my personal information including copies of emails or computer records containing my personal information, or any records which pertain to this information.
4. Full copies or transcripts of any computer logs or database records kept in relation to myself or in relation to my Yahoo account or personal information.
5. Full copies or transcripts of any telephone conversations kept between myself and Yahoo. Details of any telephone conversations between myself and Yahoo which have not been recorded should also be included.
6. Full copies of any correspondence in postal, email or any other format which you have entered into with any individual, organisation or third party which contains my personal or information, or which pertains to myself.
7. Where any previous information or records held have been deleted or disposed of, the methods used to do so, including dates, certificates or references confirming details of destruction. Where you are unable to provide such certificates, please provide a declaration, signed by an authorised officer of your company, confirming the dates and methods of destruction of this data.
8. Full hard copy print outs of any of my personal information held in a digital, magnetic or any other format which is held in any archives, backups or other storage devices / locations.
Where reference to digital information is given above, this digital information should be taken from your servers or backups / archives held in a magnetic or digital format. This data may not be present on a user’s local system, and may require the assistance of your IT department / IT providers, who you should contact immediately for their provision.
Under S.40 of The Administration of Justice Act 1970, if you believe you have provided my information to any organisation, agent, or individual who could, or may have used it for unlawful purposes, you should contact me immediately, and provide full details of their identification and address, together with full details of any instructions you have provided to them. If you have forwarded or communicated my personal information to any person, company, or organisation, please provide a copy of the authority, signed and dated by myself upon which you have relied prior to doing so. As requested above, you should provide copies on any such communications.
Under the Data Protection Act 1984 / 1998, as a Data Controller, you are responsible for the complete retraction of all information provided to any third party, should I request you to do so, and have a duty to myself to ensure that any personal or financial information I have provided to you is kept securely, and is only communicated to those to whom I have given my express permission / authority.
I enclose a cheque / postal order in the sum of £10 to cover your fee. If you are unable to deal with this request, you should immediately forward it to the person within your organisation responsible for Data Protection. If you do not provide the information requested within the given time limits (40 days) under current Law, a complaint will be registered with the Information Commissioners Office and the Office of Fair Trading.
I look forward to hearing from you in the first instance.
Yours Sincerely
(sign and print your name)
One quick question. Where were you when the message was sent? Can you prove that you had no access to a computer at the time the message was sent? (OK two questions)
skb
Address for data controller
http://www.ico.gov.uk/ESDWebPages/Do...sp?reg=4253022
skb
Well yes, if he can find out which computer the message was posted from ,and where that computer was at the time of the posting (is this possible, I don't know enough about computers and the internet to say?) and can then prove that he was nowhere near it, that would probably pursuade the Court that on the balance of probabilities it was not him who posted it.
They have to prove that he sent it in order to sustain an action against him, they already have evidence that the message was posted from his account using his identity, and this on its own will probably be enough to convince the Court that he sent it unless some kind of rebuttal evidence is provided. A straight denial by him probably isn't going to sway the Court away from the assumption that if a message was sent from his user account then it was sent by him. It is therefore up Alan to provide evidence that will pursuade the Court that it was unlikely to have been him that sent it.
Hi - wud this still apply even though the account was dormant for 12 months?. This is not disputed apart from the 1 message in question - which again does not follow the pattern of other messages - e.g. on subject matter and the fact it was defamatory.
Secondly, it is hard to prove without an IP address that the message was not sent by me - and as mentioned earlier the claimant is saying I am liable regardess on who posted the message as it was through my account.
thanks for this - i am away in abu dhabi this week - back home at the weekend and will then see if Yahoo UK have responded to my request.
I will request the info through data protection if Yahoo have not responded by then. However, as the incident was 2 years ago now - not sure that Yahoo will have the IP address.
Depends, if it was logged alongside the message then if they've got the message they've got the account associated with the message and they've got the IP address all in the same record. That's how a lot of forums work. As such I'd expect the IP address to automatically form part of the information Yahoo disclosed to the claimant's lawyers. I'm pretty sure you're entitled to see this correspondance. Ask the claimaints lawyers for it if you';re getting no joy from Yahoo.
If they'd have to fish the imformaiton out of web access logs on a seprerate system it's quite possible that these have been deleted or archived in a such a way as to not be considered searchable and therefore not covered by data protection legislation.
If archived then it may be possible for your lawyer to supoena them. I don't know.
As an ISP they should be convered by the the Data Retention Directive That means that the data almost certainly was logged at one time or another.
OK - Yahoo UK have now had their 5 working days and I have had no response from them at all. When the same letter was sent on line I received a response within 24 hours, however it was obvious from their response that they had not read my letter - i.e. it was an automated response.
I have rung Yahoo UK a couple of times, however you can not get past their reception girls. The girls at reception did say that Yahoo UK customer care was only a handful of people.
So how do I make Yahoo UK disclose this information without excessive court or lawyer costs on my part? I have thought about issuing a small claim on Yahoo UK for a nominal source of money - to request them to disclose the information required. As UK small claims court is a low cost efficient means for getting their attention.
Any thoughts?
I have no information on the original message sent - IP address.
The route to go down, IMO, is the SAR DPA request as outlined in post 19. If Yahoo still don't comply after the 40 days allowed to them then a complaint to the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) should get the ball rolling.
One more thing, have the claimants actually filed the case at court yet or just threatened to do so?
If they have then you may need to file for a stay on the case until you have all the relevant information from Yahoo.
skb
i had a virus and malware on my computer that have resulted in several erroneous messages being sent from my e-mail account to contacts in my address book.
The computer was cleaned by IBM - but not sure whether the 2 are linked.
HELP HELP HELP - Where do I go from Here!!
Finally after nearly 2 months of trying I spoke to Yahoo UK legal department. They have ignored the Subject Access Request - although 40 days is not up yet - but they say they have not received any of my correspondances - although last 2 were sent registered post!!
Anyway I also raised a small claim on Yahoo UK - and this finally gave me access to their legal department.
OK - they have verbally told me the following and will be confirmed by e-mail
- they do not keep records of IP addresses beyond 12 months - so cannot provide the IP address from which the message was sent
- they are providing records of my !_ movements for the last 12 months - but this message was sent nearly 2 1/2 years ago
- remarkably she said (but she is checking when i questioned it) - they do not have the technology to record hits on message in question and on the thread
- on how many cases a year they have on impersonated IDs and people's accounts being hacked. She said Yahoo e-mail and message board accounts are free and not user verified hence liable for this. However she didn't give me the number of cases.
Any ideas of where i go from here??
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