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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Posts
    3

    Default Somebody May Be Sharing My Email Address

    My question involves a consumer law issue in the State of: Florida

    Sometime back I submitted a comment to a federal museum's website because I was displeased that one of their tour guides was using racial slurs against middle easterners in his tour. Their website asked for my email and name with the comment and I included those things. The privacy policy link at the bottom of their comment page brings you to their privacy policy which says, "We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information." among other things. The privacy policy says that it was last updated in 2013 while my comment was made after that in 2014. Since then, the tour guide has emailed me nasty things harassing me and forwarded the email to some of his buddies. I have received a handful of nasty emails from people I do not know (and even a couple of people supporting me for speaking up). I have ignored all of them. I realize it is now May 2015, but I just got another email recently when I thought this had all died down. Clearly the museum gave the tour guide my comment, name and email and he started forwarding it around to anyone he pleased.

    Seems unprofessional that the museum would let its employee harass me for a disagreement. Furthermore, it seems wrong that they let him forward this comment around via email. That comment had my name and email attached to it which is enough to be considered PII by the GSA definition. So by giving that to the tour guide to forward around to random people they broke their privacy policy by sharing my PII.

    Has the museum broken any laws in letting my comment with PII get leaked out and emailed around? What, if anything, can be done about?

    Thanks for any feedback and advice.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Somewhere near Canada
    Posts
    35,894

    Default Re: Sharing My Pii from an Online Customer Feedback

    I'd be curious as to what "outside parties" actually means given we cannot see the contract ourselves.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Posts
    3

    Default Re: Sharing My Pii from an Online Customer Feedback

    Good point, but I don't think "outside parties" could be misconstrued to include random people with no affiliation to the museum, because that describes pretty much all of the people that decided to email me. I just don't care to become the topic of an email that gets forwarded around or posted on the internet with my name and email attached, but that seems to be what's happening unfortunately regardless of whether or not the museum was right or wrong in letting this guy have my comment and PII contact info.

    If this nonsense continues, would I have any case in talking to the museum about their breach of their own explicit privacy policy and getting this guy to stop?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Lake Chapala
    Posts
    3,043

    Default Re: Sharing My Pii from an Online Customer Feedback

    I don't think the museum gave the information to any outside parties. The museum passed the feedback to the guide (probably in an effort to help him change his behaviour) who is their employee and therefore not an outside party. The guide then passed the information on to some "outside parties" i.e., his buddies.

    When you told the museum about what the guide did with the feedback and what is happening to you now, what did the museum say?

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Somewhere near Canada
    Posts
    35,894

    Default Re: Sharing My Pii from an Online Customer Feedback

    Quote Quoting eerelations
    View Post
    I don't think the museum gave the information to any outside parties. The museum passed the feedback to the guide (probably in an effort to help him change his behaviour) who is their employee and therefore not an outside party. The guide then passed the information on to some "outside parties" i.e., his buddies.

    When you told the museum about what the guide did with the feedback and what is happening to you now, what did the museum say?
    That's what I was thinking, too. The museum seems to have broken no policy, rule or law. Sooooo....

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Posts
    1,279

    Default Re: Sharing My Pii from an Online Customer Feedback

    I'm just wondering here - the employee is an agent of the museum. If he shares the information with his friends hasn't the museum (through the malicious acts of its agent) constructively shared the information with third parties?

    Of course that brings us back to, what are the damages?

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