Because receiving a letter citing chapter & verse of the legal code is generally never the precursor to a nice friendly chat.
The actual-not-fake-researcher (instead of fictional people) could have sent a nice friendly request saying, "I'm a PhD candidate working on public policy in the tech sector. Could you please answer the following questions regarding your process of CCPA compliance, if applicable"
Legal threats are a common occurance nowadays though. I get calls weekly saying a warrant had been issued for my arrest or that my "SSN is about to be revoked".
The email also clearly says they are not sending a request at this time and it seems nicely written to me. I guess I don't get why this is on HN and everyone is so livid about it.
I understand what you’re saying, but this seemed a far more credible threat than someone wanting me to send them Bitcoin to delete my webcam video. For instance, here’s a story about a lawyer who filed so many ADA lawsuits that a judge barred them from filing any more. People abuse the legal system all the time, and while people on the receiving end of a lawsuit can fight it, it’s guaranteed to be expensive in many ways. I could absolutely see someone filing thousands of CCPA lawsuits that wouldn’t actually stand up in trial, but which would be an utter fiasco for even the un-liable defendants.
> I guess I don't get why this is on HN and everyone is so livid about it.
I think this kind of scam would end up on HN even if it was a bunch of Nigerians doing it, and what's making people angry instead of merely taking note while rolling their eyes at scammers stooping to a new low is the fact that it's respectable universities rather than Nigerians.
> . I get calls weekly saying a warrant had been issued for my arrest or that my "SSN is about to be revoked".
And those are all illegal. If the telecoms weren't incompetent and protected from liability, you could find the people who did those things and either sue them or file charges.
If you have run a business small enough that you don't have a lawyer on standby then you might understand a little better.
I have, and received a real legal threat. A bit of panic as you contemplate the financial devastation & wreckage it might leave your life in... well, a little bit of panic is actually a pretty reasonable response there.
If you've been in that situation and been totally calm about it then that's a good thing for you, but that's not the common response for someone contemplating a life-changing encounter with the legal system.
These businesses should have been aware of this already. It is their own fault for not being aware of their status and preparing for it. In no way anyone but they are to blame in this case.
I think you didn’t read my original blog post that’s linked here. I’m not a business. They send the email to me regarding my personal, hobby, zero-revenue website. I have no legal obligations under the CCPA, but I didn’t know that until I spent a few stressed-out hours researching this. Even then I was worried about the idea of being sued over it anyway, and having to explain to a court why I believed I shouldn’t be liable for damages.
Because it sounds like a letter you’d receive from someone who’s prepared to abuse the legal system to extract money from you. Also I think the OP pretty well described their reaction: they were afraid they were going to be sued.
I'm just running a hobby website. I'm not at all used to receiving letters that bring up legal questions, then give me a time frame to reply as per a specific law. To my non-lawyer reading, that looks like someone's doing their homework to figure out how to drag me into court. Judging from a lot of the responses I've gotten from other recipients, I'm far from the only one.
Obvious scams are a lot easier to dismiss without worry than ones that actually look like potentially credible legal threats.
You're just blaming the victim here, possibly because you're biased by the hindsight of already knowing the legal threat was never real in the first place.
I see that you're being downvoted, but for what it's worth I agree with you. I read the message and if I received it I wouldn't have thought much of it. Honestly I would've just thought it was spam. It's a shame though if the OP did have mental duress as a result of it, though.
