EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon first. Want to learn more? Call (855) WEB-RECON or email admin@webrecon.net today! Thanks to WebRecon for sponsoring this series.
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
Perhaps one of the biggest fears that companies in the credit and collection industry have when it comes to communicating with consumers via email is the risk of disclosing the existence of a debt to a third party. Now, this only becomes a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act if the individual who owes the debt finds out that the information was disclosed to someone else, but when that third party is directly related to you, the likelihood of finding out is higher. But there are a number of possible explanations why this may have happened, any of which could render this not a violation of the FDCPA. In this case, a plaintiff is suing a collection operation for allegedly disclosing the existence of a debt because it sent an email to her son. The subject line and the first line of the email do reference the plaintiff’s name and the email address is redacted from the exhibit attached to the complaint, so it’s impossible to know what address was used.
The background:The defendant sent the email in question on January 1. The subject line references the plaintiff’s first name, Georgia, and the first line of the body of the email says, “This important message is for [plaintiff’s name]. If you are not this person please delete the email.
- The email goes on to inform the plaintiff that there are offers available on the defendant’s self-service portal and explains what can be done by visiting the portal, such as scheduling payments and reviewing payment options.
- The email also included information about the debt and buttons to review the offers, view the account, and contact the defendant.
- The email also included mailing addresses for disputes and correspondence, hours of operation, and disclosures related to the collection attempt.
- The complaint doesn’t reference the email address that was used or how the defendant came to connect the email address to the plaintiff. It’s unknown if the address was provided by the plaintiff when signing up for the account with the original creditor or if the son signed up for the account using his mother’s information. The email that was included as an exhibit with the complaint redacted the address, which prevented learning anything else about it.
The claims: The complaint accuses the defendant of violating Sections 1692e, 1692e(10), and 1692f of the FDCPA by communicating information about the debt to a third party.
