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Australian Court Lets Lawyer Serve Papers Via Facebook
a302b writes "A Canberra lawyer has been permitted to serve legal documents via Facebook for a couple who defaulted on a loan. He claims he needed to do this because he was unable to track them down to a physical address. At what point does our online presence become 'real?' And what opportunities are available for fraud, if social networking sites are considered legal representations of ourselves, even when they can be anonymously created under any name?"
There was trouble tracing a problem with a person in our DB at a college I used to work in. They were listed in the system twice. Same Name, birthday, address, marital status, and age. In fact, the only difference was the social security number and gender. One had taken a few classes, one was full time. We spent forever tracking down the problem, assuming someone created a typo when they created the student record, then thought to call the phone number listed as their phone number (yep, same number) and they both came in. Husband and Wife were both named "Leslie" (Not common for a man, but not unheard of) both were born on the same day, in different states, and had been married for 25 years with children also attending the college. That day taught me a reminder I still keep around about jumping to conclusions. Sure, your 99.999% sure, but that leaves 1 out of 100,000, and someone has to be that one...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I'm surprised they even have lawyers in that colony of misfits.
Your not too far wrong sadly enough.
This story is really about australian debt recovery. In australia short of actual physical violence you use any tactic you like to recover debt.
You can even make threaten violence and scare the sh*t out of someone to get your money and the court will let you get away with it.
this is a link to a few who got fined. NOTE: ONLY FINED
http://www.fairtrading.qld.gov.au/OFT/OFTWeb.nsf/Web+Pages/3C3C486D9B068FDF4A256FDC007E3CB5?OpenDocument&L1=News