Can You Sue Over Loss of Personal Information?

GreenCrackBaby asks: "My wife was at a mall about a year ago when she ran across one of those groups who were trying to sign people up for a Visa credit card. Since she didn't yet have a credit card, she decided she'd fill out the form. She had everything filled out and was ready to sign it when she noticed the draconian fine print that essentially promised that they would sell her personal data to anyone they could, so instead of signing the form she said 'no thanks' and tossed it in the garbage. That was a mistake she has been made to regret. Almost immediately SPAM to her university email address went from 0 to 20 a day, and has been slowly increasing since. Soon we started to receive a large number of telemarketing calls to our home (where before we had received almost none). Junk mail addressed to her went through the roof. It wasn't until the Visa card arrived addressed to her that we knew what had happened." It appears that someone fished this woman's application out of the garbage and submitted this anyways, without a signature. How is something like this even close to being legal?

"What has become clear is that someone selling those Visas fished her application out from the garbage and submitted it. We've managed to track down a copy of the form she had filled out, and in the signature area is a big 'N/A'. So now her personal information is being sold to every telemarketer, spammer, and junk mail shop in North America. What can she do? We'd like to sue the company who fished the application from the garbage and make a lesson out of them, but what is there to sue over? Is the loss of personal information even considered a tort?"

Comments

Really? Somehow I doubt it.

[mmoncur]

I find this whole tale a bit hard to believe. Spammers have no trouble trolling the web for millions of addresses - why would they buy them from a credit card company? And why would anyone include their email address on a credit card application in the first place? And why would they bother fishing it out of the garbage? And why would they issue a card without her signature?

And why would someone so concerned about the loss of her personal information throw the application away right next to the potential thieves?

And why would someone who gets 1/10 of the spam I get have anything to complain about at all?

Considering the complete lack of non-hearsay evidence, whether it's actionable doesn't matter. You couldn't win anyway.

Simple answer to one question:

[Qbertino]

How is something like this even close to being legal?

It isn't. No?

Re:you could always

[Anonymous Coward]

I like having sex with lawyers 'cause they always fuck you in the arse

I propose a solution

[Rogerborg]

Use the VISA card to pay a lawyer to sue the crap out of them, then sue them some more when they try and collect the money.

Actually, scratch that, it rewards lawyers. Just use the VISA card to buy yourself some nice things, then tell them to go screw themselves.

Greedy, unscrupulous behaviour cuts both ways. Why should VISA get to have all the fun?