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I know. I was around. But he hasn't mass suspended all other LET customers yet.
Just because he hasn't done it en masse... Doesn't mean he won't.
I honestly believe complaints should be filed now. If you haven't backed up, DO IT NOW!
Sorry if I sound a bit dramatic but the guy isn't bluffing.
He's been asking for people to file complaints. This should have been done the moment he introduced himself and announced he has taken over, especially as no email had been sent in advance, which already constitutes a GDPR breach under transparency requirements.
You are free to contact ICO yourself if you think it's appropriate.
They can and do take legal action against serious compliance issues, but their mission is to get companies to obey the law and only use litigation as a very last step.
IMHO at the moment he's creating a great chain of evidence for use later on to show his intentions to violate the GDPR regulations, even after registering with ICO, but until the 30 days has passed he can still delete the data and/or obtain consent and be in compliance. If he does either, I doubt ICO would be interested in taking any further action.
The ICO registration is a bit of a joke itself. The address of the DPO is invalid thanks to the typos. Talk about a major epic fail
Do you really think that he'll comply within the 30 days you mention. I don't. He's spending more time on reacting here/Discord, creating scripts to and delete accounts, etc as to really getting things forward IMHO.
BTW: Those 30 days are to delete the data; officially (at least in the Netherlands) you have to inform customers about the fact that you are holding the data before or as soon as possible after you gain access to it. Basically, by saying "we have the mail ready but we won't send it yet" is more than enough proof of not complying.
I was hoping for quite some time, but I don't anymore. The way he acts, his denial of regulations or rights, I mean, even if he complies with GDPR, what's the next thing? He still needs to admit that the customers of Lewis are now his customers and his responsiblity. I don't think he won't. So basically, he'll keep on going "I'll delete" "I'll delete" every single time he smells a farth. And that's a lot of times when you stink like he does.
He hasn't nuked everything yet. My (and I think jsg's?) servers are still up.
We are at page 96... and to think all this mess would have been so simple to solve...
All he had to do was send a mass e-mail message to all customers, presenting himself, his business, his future plans and so on - all as clear as possible.
But no. He had to be irresponsible, vague, argue, refuse to comply legal regulations and act stubborn by wasting precious time on public platforms. Precisely because of his lack of professionalism and his stubbornness, services and data of customers will be deleted as per his decision to treat deletions and chargebacks lightly from the get-go.
It is unbelievable how beautiful this drama has been so far.
To be honest, I suspect there probably was a deal made between Lewis Edwards (owner of original VeloxMedia) and Jason Morgan (owner of benthost). It’s just that the former was desperate to dump and run, and the latter was advised by US strip mall lawyers. As a result, GDPR was not properly considered, and they probably mistakenly thought their liabilities were capped because they were buying carved out assets, and not customers.
Who ‘Eric’ is and why anyone would hand him the keys to operate any business remains a mystery. All we know is that he’s seemingly working out of some shared office space in a different state based on the ICO filing (with a misspelled and incomplete address). He displayed ignorance, arrogance and general ineptitude many times in this thread - and I generally don’t buy any of this one whole “multi million dollar company” story.
That is debatable. He made sure to always be vague. He did not say 12 million US dollars (as in United States Dollars). For example 12 million Zimbabwean Dollars means about 185 United States Dollars.
Well
Oh, So now he started not only deleting customers from server but also deleting messages from there ?
Also what exactly is on this screenshot? He claims he has no control but built full integration of orders db with Stripe and PayPal? WTF? Stripe and PayPal support that?
No, I really don't think he has any intention of complying with the law.
Yeah, and I tried explaining that to him several times yesterday.
I guess the biggest hurdle (again assuming he is trying to be legit) is that people outside the EU and UK in general don't appreciate what an actually good piece of legislation the GDPR is, and how it is actually a net benefit for individuals.
[probable offtopic rant incoming...]
Lots of companies complain about how hard it is to comply with the rules, and I accept that if you're starting from a place of total non-compliance that it is hard to get the right workflows in place, but the reality is that most of the objections are really over a fundamentally different worldview - one where the individual's rights is important, in contrast to the one where a company's right to maximise profits is most important.
Tragically in the US, selling your users PII has become seen almost as a the default fallback plan for an additional corporate revenue stream. And why not? You know people will pay good money for it, right? And for the company looking to maximise its profits, that's great. But for the individual, it's almost always negative, because the people paying for that data are using it to make money off the individual. It takes an absolutely massive shift in mindset to go from one to the other, and it's kind of easier for us in the EU because we've been considering this since the late 80s and it's been a relatively slow process getting to this point. I can totally understand why to people from other countries it feels like a massive burden and imposition, especially against the backdrop were selling PII is routine and it feels like "that data is going to be sold by someone else anyway, why is it my problem". I can only hope that some day, they'll get to personally experience the liberation of visiting a site with a pop-up cookie banner, reading the list of companies they want to sell your data to and being empowered to think "you know what, I'll just close this and either find a different site with this information, or open it in incognito mode or use a VPN or whatever".
It's kind of sad that the cookie banner has been weaponised by companies pissed off they might make less from selling on PII, so that it's as user-obtrusive as possible. That's not what the regulation requires, simply user consent for tracking that isn't essential to the site's operation. That companies would rather make their entire website unavailable in other countries simply because they can't make money from selling PII is a sad reflection of their mindset. The vast majority of websites have no technical need for a cookie at all. Some websites need a temporary token for a single session for things like a shopping cart. That is a technical requirement and doesn't need consent, just documenting in the privacy policy. It's only when you start trying to gain data about the user's habits that it starts becoming a problem. For me, the pop-up cookie banner is a massive red flag that the company is probably trying to screw you over somehow.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don't trust Eric in the slightest. I just think it's too soon (for me personally) to report it to ICO.
PS sorry I caught up in GDPR apologist mode in the middle of this!
Also, I mixed up this Benthost IT company in Ohio with a much larger Benthost printing company in Ohio with lots of employees and an actual multi-million revenue. I don't for one second believe his claims of $12m, if for no other reason that you wouldn't let someone this idiotic head up a project that large.
Welp my service is terminated.
From July to December (when it stopped be usable due to "DDOS").
36$ (ok, I got half of billing period - 18$) down the drain.
Yeah, he's cancelling every LET plan now
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Sorry, it's friday.
Still discussion? Almost 100 pages there.
There is an Andrew working at the law firm that has the same address as benthost in the Velox Media registration. Suspect he was ‘AndrewFromLegal’ - but hardly a legal department
So was I, that's why I renewed my service.
So if it's long, it's harder to get it hard?
Haha
If not an exit scam it's even worse imho.
Caught another lie I guess.
What?
The longer man doesn't let go, the harder it became
Its always about attitude. Like, this week another host accidentally deleted my server. Sure, I wasn't happy but they handled it professionally, hence no drama.
He will get banned eventually... Now is not the time though...