Asked for contract ending, with no response, and still able to use the product Background: A couple of years ago I ordered a domain, and I used it to test some things. So for clearance, I paid for it. I asked if I could use a webserver for testing and they agreed and gave me a free webserver to use, for a non-discussed period. I used it, but after a couple of years I didn't use it anymore. When I got an invoice to pay, I thought that if I didn't pay it the domain would not extend and the webserver would be shut down. After that I did not look at the domain/webserver anymore, I've got an email that reminded me that if I didn't pay my domain would be deleted/sold and that was it. After that I didn't got any messages from the company. After a while I was going to the website, and it was still online, I looked if I could still log in to the webserver and I could still log in and modify it. I have since sent other emails to the company and received no response. Question: Is it legal to use the domain/webserver? I don't pay anymore and have received no invoice. Could I be required to pay for all the years I had the domain but did not pay for it? Note that I live in the Netherlands.
It is rather unclear what the facts are, and the legal answer would depend crucially on those facts. My understanding is that you bought a domain from a provider, and they allowed you to use a web server for some period. It also appears that you don't have a clear understanding of the contract, which may have been made online and you might not have retained a copy of the agreement (which would allow you to look at the terms). The assumption that failing to pay substitutes for explicitly cancelling a service is incorrect. If under the contract you agree to pay a certain amount per year, then you have been racking up charges for some time, and you would need to actually cancel. Ultimately, they could take you to court to force you to pay what you owe, although usually there are less drastic intermediate steps. In court, they would produce their documents to show that you owe money, and your attorney would somehow counter, perhaps by alleging that you had a good-faith belief that the contract had been terminated. It is possible that they simply messed up and failed to send you an invoice earlier, which could explain the lack of invoice. At any rate, the fact that you haven't gotten an invoice does not legally entitle you to avoid paying for the service, whether or not you use it. On the premise that they haven't taken back the domain (seems like they didn't), you can legally use it. However, if you do use it, then that would trash any claim that you believed the contract had been terminated (to argue "I thought it had been canceled" entails "and thus I didn't use the service").
It looks like the gym was allowed to take the money out of your bank account and didn't. They didn't notice that they didn't take your money, so they can't really expect you to notice it. So you haven't done anything that would be criminal. The bigger question is how much you owe them. If you used the gym all the time, like someone paying monthly would do, they will most likely have the right to payment. That's not unlimited, there will be some &quot;statute of limitations&quot; so they can't ask you for 30 years back payments, but with less than two years they probably have a right. If they raised prices, it's unlikely the would have a right to that because they never told you. The situation while your subscription was frozen is interesting. Basically you just walked in, used the gym without paying, but they didn't stop you in any way. I could walk into your gym, ask if it is Ok to use it, and if they say &quot;yes&quot; and don't mention payment, I'm in. So for this time you can argue whether or not you owe them money. Summary: You haven't done anything criminal. You most likely owe them money. About the money, they can take you to court if you don't pay which will cost both sides money. Since you did use their service and other users did pay, the morally right thing would be to pay what seems fair to you, possibly with some negotiation. And legally, you might consider paying them enough to make both sides happy enough so you can stay a gym member and don't get sued for the money.
It's not clear exactly what you're asking, when you say "the company I work for" – i.e. are you asking "can they fire me?" (almost certainly they can, even if their TOS thinking is legally misguided – unless in your country there are laws that prevent firing employees). To be certain, you need to hire an attorney who is sufficiently savvy about web page technology that they can accurately judge what you are doing, and whether you can fruitfully resist their demands. You seem to be skeptical of their position because you are "not affecting their servers in any way". The TOS is not about affecting their servers, it is about affecting their intellectual property. It appears that your code does a number of the prohibited actions such as and perhaps most importantly "modify". If you have distributed a program that allows users to modify company content on their own computers, then the user might be in violation of the TOS, but not you (since you're not running a server that redistributes). However, I am betting that in order to create and test the program you had to violate the TOS. Additionally, you could be vicariously liable for the infringements of others, especially if this program can only be used to infringe on copyright, and you know this fact. That is pretty much the end of the legal part. As for how you should respond, your attorney, and not Law SE, deals in recommendations.
What's the worst that can happen? If you do nothing, it's a bit inconvenient. If you delete all that company's stuff, who knows what they could sue you for. I'm not saying they would be right, but being sued can be expensive, no matter whether you are wrong or right. Send a letter by registered mail, with a witness to the contents, that you are the only one with admin rights to these sites, and asking them how they would like to take over these sites, and informing them that you will delete anything on your personal email after a reasonable time if you don't hear from them. And since anything you do is work for you, you should expect some appropriate compensation. Deleting their property, even if it affects you, is risky.
This is possibly but not necessarily fine. The data controller (the garage) is responsible for safeguarding your personal data. They must take appropriate safety measures, but this depends a lot on their own risk assessment. For example, to protect the data from being used by employees for their personal purposes, the controller might use organizational measures like a policy “you're not allowed to do that.” Many companies allow employees to use their personal devices for work purposes (BYOD). When the data controller allows this and takes appropriate safety measures, everything is perfectly fine. The company still has to make sure that the data is only processed for legal purses and deleted afterwards. Implementing a BYOD policy in a GDPR compliant manner is difficult but not impossible. A data breach has occurred when the security measures were insufficient and your data was deleted or disclosed without authorization. Your scenario would only be a breach if the company did not have a BYOD policy and the salesman used their personal phone, and arguably then only if that device is also breached. However, do not discount the alternatives: they do have a BYOD policy and the salesman is acting within their instructions the salesman was using a company-controlled device, not their personal phone If you have good reason to believe that your data was mishandled (and these alternatives do not apply), then the GDPR offers you the following remedies: You can of course complain to the data controller, especially if they have a dedicated data protection officer. You can lodge a complaint with a supervision authority, which is the ICO in the UK. They expect you to attempt to resolve your issue with the controller first. The ICO can then decide if they want to investigate the issue. You can sue them for compliance and for actual damages suffered (you have none, though). Note that all of these alternatives are more effort than they are likely worth. In particular, the garage can always correct the problem, e.g. by getting your contact info deleted from the personal device or by creating a retroactive BYOD policy.
For a contract (including ToS) to be valid, one of the things it must have is "legality of objects". That is, if the contract purports to require anything that is unlawful in the jurisdiction then (barring a severance clause) it is not a contract. In common law countries, the starting point is that people are free to contract for and about anything they like - a contract is simply a mechanism for exchanging value between the parties on whatever terms they wish. However, judges and legislatures have decided that there are some things you cannot trade and some terms that are unconscionable or against the public interest and these vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction*. For example, a contract is not legal in any jurisdiction if its terms seek to exclude the intervention of the courts - this is against public policy. So for example, a binding arbitration clause requiring the parties to accept a private arbitrator's decision as final excludes the courts, yes? Well, in Australia, yes, such clauses if used in a contract between parties with different bargaining power (like a Telco and its customers) are invalid because they prevent the weaker party pursuing a class action. However, they are perfectly legal in the United States because the SCOTUS has determined that the customer can persue litigation after arbitration is finished so this doesn't impede the courts. These are essentially the same laws interpreted by the courts so that they have totally opposite effects. So this might lead you to think that you'll put one in - it'll be OK in the US and Australians will represent such a tiny share of your market that you don't care if I can't enforce my ToS there. Except, if your website is visible by Australians, you have just exposed yourself to a government fine of up to AUD 5,000,000 (say USD 3,000,000) per day for breach of Australian Consumer Law. As a general guide (which is very stereotypical), US jurisdictions are the most permissive in the rights they will allow their citizens to give up: the US attitude is that everyone is free to make the best deal they can. European jurisdictions are the least permissive in this regard: most European countries follow a more social welfare state model and the citizen needs protecting from themselves. Commonwealth countries tend to be more in the middle.
I don't think the issue is that it is a violation of a law, but rather that it is a violation of the terms of service you agree to when you sign up for the site - which is a breach of contract. You can be sued for breach of contract, if the site can prove any damages based on your breach. So if you use a bot to make money on a site, in violation of the site's license agreement, then I believe the site could indeed sue you to get the money back. Also, the phrasing of your question ("creating a robot") raises a separate issue. It is not actually creating the bot that is illegal, but using it where not allowed can be a violation of contract. Suppose person A makes a poker bot, just as a programming exercise, and doesn't use it. But then suppose person B uses the robot created by person A on a site that forbids it. Although this could be a gray area, I do not believe the site would have any recourse against person A (even though they probably would against person B).
Is that extortion? false advertising? or in any way illegal? Not at all. The owner of the site is simply exercising his right as outlined in the terms and conditions from when the user signed up. And giving users an option for continued use of the site (that is, for him not to exercise a right of which they were always aware) does not constitute extortion.