Do I have the legal right to let Twitter customer support delete an email exchange I had with them? I did have an exchange with them and afterwards, now, I would like them to delete it after solving the problem. Is that possible? thanks
You could certainly allow twitter to delete the exchange, unless it is part of some record that the law in the relevant country require to be retained, which would be quite unusual. That would depend on the nature of the exchange, and the particular law requiring that records be retained. However, if the request is to be able to demand that Twitter delete the exchange, that would be much harder. In general a person or business is entitled to retain copies of communications, such as emails, sent to that person or entity. There is the &quot;right to be forgotten&quot; which applies under EU law, but that would not apply to records which a business needed to retain for its own legitimate purposes, and was not posting publicly, as I understand it. In any case Twitter is not an EU business, so I am not sure if the right would apply at all. (Twitter has an office in Amsterdam, so teh GDPR and other EU law clearly applies to it.) There might be some other basis on which such a demand could be made, depending on the detailed circumstances and the specific jurisdiction, but I cannot think of one offhand.
No, there is no general publicly accessible directory of lawsuits against private individuals, even if it concerns yourself. The complaint must identify you as the defendant indicating a ladungsfähige Anschrift, § 253 Ⅱ, Ⅳ, 130 ZPO. Commencing an action requires service of process, § 253 Ⅰ ZPO. I presume you are not a De-Mail user. So you will get a hardcopy. You may not know that, but such mail in Germany is usually sent in yellow envelopes. The mailman will carefully compare the mailbox label and in case of a match record the date and time of successful delivery on the envelope as well as a slip of paper returned to the sender, the court in this case. Now this will obviously fail in your case (unless the landlord maliciously attached a corresponding label to a mailbox). In a civil action the court “pretends” to be dumb regarding facts. The landlord must try to track you down. Evidently he knew your email address, so he had some contact details. If he was evil, the next option would be to ask the court for an öffentliche Zustellung, § 185 ZPO. If the court agreed, this means there will be, for instance, in the city hall a paper on a bulletin board “To the attention of Coala, last known address …: There is mail for you to pick up at my office.” Two weeks later the letter is automatically considered to be delivered.Some cities (example: Cologne, NRW) also publish these documents on the internet, but due to GDPR considerations delete them after a certain period now. If there was a lawsuit, there will have been a default judgment by now, i.e. you will have lost just by being a no‑show. However, you said you have never received the bill. This means the landlord must have produced false evidence, claim to have sent the bill and a subsequent warning notice, but there was none. But this is an entirely different issue.
The most important fact to bear in mind is that there's no way to predict whether a given individual will decide to file a suit against you, though we might say on what basis he might, if he so chooses. There are two basic grounds for a suit, one pertaining to trademarks and the other pertaining to use of names – misappropriation and violating the right of publicity. A word can be a trademark, but the scope of protection is somewhat narrow because the protection is in terms of use within a given business. So calling your computer company "Apple" is out, but calling you roofing service the same is okay (assuming that somebody didn't previously register "Apple Roofing"). The main consideration is the likelihood of confusion. Supposing your business were selling landline telephones and I don't think Apple computer company sells such phones, you might still be in trouble if you called your company "Apple Phone", since they certainly do sell phones. There are thousands of trademarks that include "Puff", including Cocopuffs and various pizza and cheese puffs. Since "Puff" is such a generic word, there is a higher bar to proving infringement (there are thousands of trademarks including "Puff"). "Puff Daddy" is, however, a registered trademark covering perfume, jewelry, clothing and certain online services, so there is a non-negligible chance of confusion. In the case of names (or apparent names), an additional concern is whether this is commercial exploitation without consent of a person's name (which causes harm to the subject). The underpinning of this tort is that such a use falsely implies an endorsement of the product. Again, with a fairly generic word like Puff, there isn't a clear implication that Sean Combs has endorsed a product that is called "Puff Communications", but "Puff Daddy Communications" would almost certainly cross that line. The main issues, then, are the extent to which the name is generic vs. unique, and whether it is likely that a person would interpret the product or service as being the same as another, or would constitute an endorsement.
I'm curious to know, because Google allowed their ownership of the domain to expire, why do they still have the rights to it even when it was bought by another individual. You're making an incorrect assumption here. The domain was never allowed to expire. An error in Google's domain registration interface allowed him to make an order for the domain. The domain was never actually purchased, but the act of ordering the domain gave Mr. Ved access to the domain in Google's Webmaster Tools. As the domain was never actually available for purchase, Mr. Ved had no rights to it. (The domain is not even registered through Google's domain registration interface; it's under a completely separate company, MarkMonitor, that specializes in high-value domains.)
They provide a snail- and e-mail way to end the contract here. This will not eradicate the €50 that they say you owe, but you can sort that out separately. That email address might also respond to inquiries about the validity of the charge. At any rate, they also give a link to online dispute resolution per Art. 14, para 1 of the EU Online Dispute Resolution Regulations. GDPR does not give one the right to be deleted so as to avoid an existing liability.
Typically in defamation law, claims made persuiant to litigation are not defamatory, since they are going to be tested for validity if the case goes to trial. I'm not familiar with any differences in what is generally done in settlements between the U.K. and the U.S., but since both are Common Law countries, and Settlements are very common in civil proceedings in the U.S., it's a good start. Generally a settlemant can occur anytime before the verdict of the case is rendered, although usually it will happen after preliminary hearings during the Discovery phase. In the U.S., Discovery is very broad and one need not prove that the requested items contain evidence but might contain evidence. This means that, for example, you could request a substantial amount of e-mail records from the opposing party because somewhere on the company e-mail server, there might be something to help your case. And even if after you sift through the emails and find no smoking guns related to your case, you could find some dirty laundry that's unrelated but still damning... if not more so than the initial case. Many people, especially big compainies, would rather just give the ex-employee some what he/she wants, if it means they don't get to see the proverbial man behind the curtain. Additionally the practice might fall into a legally gray area of the law that, if it reaches trial, could hurt the company or even the industry if a judge rules against the company, effectively saying that this gray area is now definately illegal. Better to eat the loss of capital with the settling out of court than to take the much larger hit of the buisness practice being illegalized all together. Typically in settlements, both parties agree to terms and sign a contract. While the whole of the terms are never discussed, almost all include that the plaintiff will drop the case and never bring the matter to court again and that both parties will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) meaning that they won't discuss the rest of the settlement terms with anyone not party to them. If the plaintiff does break the NDA, the defendant can sue for breech of contract and recover at the least the monitary compensation they awarded in the settlement. Conversely, if the respondent breaks the NDA, the plaintiff can refile their initial suit with the addition of breech of contract (and this time it will get to court... and all the dirty laundry sees the harsh light of day.). While the respondent in a settled case can possibly sue for defamation if the plaintiff said the respondent did what the initial suit claimed they did (legally, it was never proven or disproven), or they were guilty (again, since no verdict was reached at trial, no guilt was established), the breech of contract is a much more airtight case and doesn't open up discovery to the respondent's cupability in the settled case (since the breech is about discussing the settled case at all, not the validity of the accusations of the settled case). Typically they would not go this route because then it opens the can of worms the settlement was trying to keep a lid on.
The warning notice is intended for viewers and participants, not for the court to make its own official record of the proceedings. Presumably, it was this court record that the judge released for educational purposes under his own Order via Twitter. In which case, there has been no contempt of court.
Congrats, you've done well to minimize your processing of personal data. But I think you're still processing personal data, and are subject to the GDPR. Serving a website necessarily involves processing an IP address. This IP address will typically be personal data. While you are not storing the IP address, the GDPR's definition of “processing” extends beyond storage and pretty much covers doing anything with that IP address. As far as I know this is not an entirely settled matter, but it's better to err on the side of caution and to assume that you are in fact performing a processing activity. Even a static web page can easily lead to additional relevant processing of personal data, for example if the HTML embeds resources from third party domains. Since your website is clearly targeted at the public, it does not fall under the GDPR's exception for “purely personal or household” purposes. So I think you do need a (minimal) privacy notice that contains at least the items mentioned in Art 13 GDPR. The main reason why some people try to avoid posting a privacy notice is because it must disclose your identity and contact details. But in Germany, that information has to be provided anyway due to the Impressumspflicht. As part of your GDPR compliance obligations, you must protect how data is processed by others on your behalf. A hosting provider will typically act as your data processor. For this to be legal, you need a contract / data processing agreement that fulfills the conditions in Art 28 GDPR. This contract binds the data processor to only use the data as instructed by you, and not for their own purposes. European hosting providers sometimes include the necessary terms in their terms of service / AGB, but you should check to make sure. Netcup expects you to accept their data processing amendment in your account settings. In the hypothetical case that you were not processing any personal data at all, the GDPR would not apply and it wouldn't require you to post a privacy notice. Other laws might still have information obligations, notably the German TMG and TTDSG.