Terms of Service

[Sherry]

Originally Posted by tehsux0r

In that case, it would seem sensible to draw up standard terms and conditions for paid-up customers, and add a couple of overriding "we can do anything we like" clauses that specifically apply only to free customers.

Hmm, as it is the only difference I can see between Free and Paid users is the available features. I've always felt FM respects their free users the same as the paid ones. Also, legally they may need to have the same rights to quickly shut down a paid user who may be abusing the service so the rest of us aren't hurt by what that user is doing so I would think they have to leave the wording up to the lawyers who, of course, know the best way to protect FM and the FM users as a whole.

Sherry

[ReuvenNY]

Sherry, this could be resolved by reserving the right to shut someone out for a cause...
They can terminate your or my account tomorrow, without letting me know in advance, without letting me move my gigabytes of stored email, after having it for 8 years with no violation of any kind - for no reason whatsoever!

[Sherry]

I'm not a lawyer so it's hard for me to respond to this type of posts and why the lawyers felt it necessary to word things the way they did. All I can do is guess at stuff but if it states they need a specific cause (any cause) then legally it may be necessary to prove cause in order to shut someone down? If they have to do that and especially have to notify first and give someone time to move large storages of email then the rest of us could be hurt by what the person continues to do that is hurting the service?

Sherry

[David]

Originally Posted by Sherry

I'm not a lawyer so it's hard for me to respond to this type of posts and why the lawyers felt it necessary to word things the way they did. All I can do is guess at stuff but if it states they need a specific cause (any cause) then legally it may be necessary to prove cause in order to shut someone down? If they have to do that and especially have to notify first and give someone time to move large storages of email then the rest of us could be hurt by what the person continues to do that is hurting the service?

Sherry

You place a lot of trust in Fastmail Sherry.......... And (to be quite honest) I don't think your trust is misplaced. That said, if I were I new subscriber today, encountering Fastmail for the very first time, my reaction (to the TOS and Privacy agreement) would not be the same, and may in fact be entirely the opposite.

[ReuvenNY]

Sherry, I am afraid you are missing the point: no one disputes that an email service provider should have the right to close an account immediately, without notice for a CAUSE! They may have to eventually explain and prove that there was a valid reason for their action. That's given. All they need to do is claim there was a cause, and subsequently deal with it.
My point is this: say tomorrow morning Jeremy and Rob, after drinking the whole night, having a serious hangover decide to bet on what Sherry will do if they suddenly, without a notice or a declared cause delete her gigabytes of mail.
Obviously I do not believe they will do something like this, but legally they can and you will have zero recourse!! They do not even have to refund your unused prorated fee.
I am not a lawyer either, but I know how to read and I know what the following means:

"The Service Provider may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service(s) at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately, for any reason whatsoever, with or without providing any refund of any payments...."

[Sherry]

Originally Posted by David

You place a lot of trust in Fastmail Sherry.......... And (to be quite honest) I don't think your trust is misplaced. That said, if I were I new subscriber today, encountering Fastmail for the very first time, my reaction (to the TOS and Privacy agreement) would not be the same, and may in fact be entirely the opposite.

I agree with what you're saying David and without my trust in the owners of the service I may not like what I read but most others are not a whole lot better. I'm one of those people who do read that stuff when I install programs or sign up for things. None of them are written for the good of both sides, just the company/services side. After all, that's what their lawyers are for. In the case of a service then I think/hope protecting the company means protecting their customers or they would soon go out of business.

Sherry

[Sherry]

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

Obviously I do not believe they will do something like this, but legally they can and you will have zero recourse!! They do not even have to refund your unused prorated fee.

I would have zero recourse "unless" there is something in the Australian law or even in the US law (I've read that sometimes a US citizen's law can come before an online law in a different country). For me to answer your scenario I would need to hire an attorney to go over the TOS and Privacy policies and explain them to me and how they would work for me.

Sherry

[tehsux0r]

Originally Posted by Sherry

Hmm, as it is the only difference I can see between Free and Paid users is the available features. I've always felt FM respects their free users the same as the paid ones. Also, legally they may need to have the same rights to quickly shut down a paid user who may be abusing the service so the rest of us aren't hurt by what that user is doing

What I said was based on your suggestion that offering free accounts might be what causes the majority of abuse problems. I don't know whether that's true, but if it is then I think what I suggested might be a reasonable way to deal with it. If paid accounts cause just as much trouble, then of course this doesn't apply.

Originally Posted by Sherry

so I would think they have to leave the wording up to the lawyers who, of course, know the best way to protect FM and the FM users as a whole.
Sherry

I don't see how this follows. The lawyers know best how to protect FM by giving the management absolute power to do anything they like in perpetuity. That isn't necessarily the same as protecting the users, either as a whole or individually. Leaving the wording entirely to the lawyers is obviously what was done in this case, which is why the resulting wording is a blanket cover-all assigning their paying clients no accountability whatsoever.

Given that my complaint is with the complete lack of protection my data enjoys under this contract, saying that the lawyers "of course know best how to protect...FM users" seems very off the mark.

[tehsux0r]

Originally Posted by Sherry

I'm not a lawyer so it's hard for me to respond to this type of posts and why the lawyers felt it necessary to word things the way they did. All I can do is guess at stuff but if it states they need a specific cause (any cause) then legally it may be necessary to prove cause in order to shut someone down?

I responded to this earlier: I think you're confusing civil law with criminal law, where you might have to (for example) obtain a warrant beforehand to search premises. Civil law is entirely reactive - there's no wording that would require any kind of prior permission from a court for any action on FM's part. The only difference is the degree to which they might *later* be accountable for inappropriate actions.

Any company can do whatever they like, whenever they like, until they're dragged into court by either the criminal justice system (for committing a crime, e.g. theft) or a plaintiff seeking damages of some kind for actionable things they did. What is actionable is defined by the contract and applicable civil law.

Originally Posted by Sherry

If they have to do that and especially have to notify first and give someone time to move large storages of email then the rest of us could be hurt by what the person continues to do that is hurting the service?
Sherry

This simply isn't true for the reasons given above. The only difference between over-broad wording and more discriminating wording is in the degree to which FM might afterwards be accountable to a user for damage they caused through hasty or over-punitive actions. If they define "abuse" broadly enough (to include anything that causes, or threatens to cause, denial of service or unreasonable expense to other FM users or mail providers), and then state that accounts can be closed and erased instantly for abuse, it would do just as well.

Spammers could then have their e-mail sending privileges revoked instantly under a "spam" clause, and be allowed to get their stuff off FM's servers before erasure. If they cause any further trouble while prevented from sending mail, this counts as abuse and can get them instantly kicked.

I just thought of that example in three minutes. One could pick holes in it, but any decent lawyer paid to give even a small damn about reassuring customers could do a thoroughly airtight job. Unnecessary brevity is the real cause of the problems with FM's contract, not legal completeness. If they hadn't tried to cram everything into a few paragraphs, it wouldn't have to be so simplistically one-sided.

[tehsux0r]

I guess today's e-mail makes it clear why the user agreements were changed. We're also given no time in which to decide whether to terminate or not, as the transfer of ownership apparently takes effect today. Great.

[Obius]

The new term that accounts can be deleted for any reason whatsoever becomes clear with the Opera transfer. Whatever Opera does with FastMail such as merges it with Opera Webmail will no doubt be planned and tested but Opera can rest assured that if there's a blunder and any accounts disappear then they're okay. Nice.

[NickRem]

Originally Posted by tehsux0r

I guess today's e-mail makes it clear why the user agreements were changed.

Really? It was my understanding that it had nothing to do with it.

[NickRem]

Originally Posted by mariner

I have high hopes regarding Opera. Their formal stance on user privacy appears to be everything that FastMail's is not.

Not sure what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?

[brong]

Originally Posted by Obius

The new term that accounts can be deleted for any reason whatsoever becomes clear with the Opera transfer. Whatever Opera does with FastMail such as merges it with Opera Webmail will no doubt be planned and tested but Opera can rest assured that if there's a blunder and any accounts disappear then they're okay. Nice.

No blunders planned here - and I fully intend to be involved in the process!

[mariner]

Not sure what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?

My apologies: I put it in the wrong thread! I’ve moved it, mutatis mutandis, to the privacy policy thread, which also contains a brief summary of my and others’ concerns.

As to tehsux0r’s comment — to hazard a guess — I think he’s saying that the need for certain language changes was discovered in the course of the acquisition discussions. There doesn’t seem to be any difference between the earlier policy and the current one as regards termination.

They did, however, grant themselves the new right to disclose customer data “To facilitate a change of control of the Service Provider or the acquisition of the Service Provider's business by a third party, and to enable that third party to continue to provide the FastMail.FM services to you.” No coincidence there, as alka observes in the acquisition thread — though I’m not sure it diminished one’s privacy that much since the original policy was so wide open to begin with.