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12 Responses to “Adaptive Affinity have started threatening bloggers!”

1. aquariumdrinker Says:
   September 13th, 2010 at 18:26

   Burn everything. Change your name, hair and (if possible) your major facial features. Travel in guise of a student, or a housewife. Mostly, learn to blend in with the crowd.

2. Erik R. Says:
   September 13th, 2010 at 22:41

   Wow! Personally, I’m dying of curiosity to know exactly what their “legal rights and remedies in respect of this matter” are. To find out, I guess you have two options: 1) Hire a lawyer or 2) Wait and see. If I were a scam business, I’d have this letter ready to send out to people who published the truth about my organization, and maybe not have the lawyers to back up the threat. But who knows?

   Whatever happens, please keep your loyal readers informed. Whether or not you end up taking down the original post, the comments on it have confirmed that you are in the right, morally, if not legally.

3. Erik R. Says:
   September 13th, 2010 at 22:42

   Ha! It’s clear that aquariumdrinker has never met you. :-)

4. Carl Says:
   September 14th, 2010 at 07:01

   What should you do? Depends on your attitude to bullies really.

   You’re not the only blogger they’ve mailed this to, and I doubt they’ll want to start a dozen legal proceedings. They also won’t want the Steisand Effect of the negative publicity suing bloggers will generate.

   If you’re really worried by this attempt to scare you, consider this: If there’s anything that’s clearly illegal, edit it. Anything borderline, stick an “alledgedly” in front of it.

   Wonder why they care that you’ve allegedly disclosed the alleged location of their alleged call centre???

5. Paul Says:
   September 14th, 2010 at 10:33

   Big business thinks, and is often able, to get away with bullying people. I think your primary concern is the protection of you and your family from both financial and emotional risk. As Eric pointed out you and many other blogs, social networking sites etc have raised awarenes of this problem and I congratulate you. However just a few points to note about their letter:
   - Regarding your own posts – should it get to court, the ownus will be you to prove that what you said is true.
   - Regarding other people’s posts, I found the following information on the net:

   “A blog isn’t exempted from the real world – just because a blog is, well, a blog and all webby and modern and stuff, it doesn’t mean that all of sudden the rules governing the rest of the world have suddenly been thrown away and we can write what we want. We can’t. The rules on defamation apply to blogs just as they do to all other media, be the author a business or an individual.
   TOP TIP – Moderation method is surprisingly key – This is a tricky one. Comments on blogs can be administered by the blog “owner” in one of two ways.
   1. “We never moderate, – all comments go up automatically.”
   Or (the more common approach):
   2. “All comments are read and manually approved”
   In case 2, comments are manually reviewed to ensure that comments are genuine and not irrelevant “spam” comments).
   The latter approach gives a better quality of comments BUT also brings with it a potential legal danger.
   If:
   • a comment has been reviewed and published by the blog owner;
   • that comment is subsequently found to be slanderous; then
   • it is the blog owner who is liable not the original author of the comment.
   If there had been no “moderation” or “approval” of the comment, and the comment had simply appeared automatically, the blog owner would not be liable. A good analogy is a newspaper. If a newspaper knowingly publishes a slanderous article by a journalist, it’s not the journalist who gets hit, but the newspaper (fair enough). Same for blogging.
   So, if you manually approve comments on your blog, then please bear the above in mind

   The following link may also be of interest

   http://www.urban75.org/info/libel.html

   Finally, good luck with whatever you choose but I think you’ve done your bit (and helped me reclaim money) so don’t take any risks.

   Paul

6. hubbers Says:
   September 14th, 2010 at 13:03

   The call centre one confused me too. Why would they care? And the lack of name. Why no name? And the formatting was aweful. The whole letter read with the professinoalism of a Nigerian 418 scam.

   I suspect that since my blog post on Adaptive Affinity is the second result in Google for the search ‘Adaptive Affinity’ http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=adaptive+affinity&aq=f&aqi=g4g-o1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=da3e0a7a830a4626 that I might be at the top of the pile of bloggers they want to silence.

7. Peter Monk Says:
   September 16th, 2010 at 03:57

   Hi Hubbers,

   I saw that you posted a comment on The London Plan – cheers! I received a letter from AA as well, almost identical to yours.

   Although I host the blog in question, I am not the operator/author. I had thought initially that this was a reasonable defence as far as I personally was concerned: it is in the US, I believe, as they make a distinction between publishing and authorship.

   After reading a bit more about libel, however, I saw my best course of action as being either retraction or substantiation of all claims, hence the removal of the original post+comments and the publishing of the new article.

   I think that in most cases, simply making sure (and proving) that what you’re saying is true is an appropriate defence against a claim of libel. It depends on which regional laws will be governing any legal action.

   I’m all for complying with legitimate requests from people who feel that they have been wronged, but I agree that AA’s letters seemed to be little more than bullying. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have invested as much time in it as I did. :)

   All the best,
   Peter.

8. hubbers Says:
   September 16th, 2010 at 12:42

   Thanks Peter,

   I have re-written the original post to remove emotion and just state verifiable facts.

   I also have this feedback from a friend of a friend who is an actual libel lawyer:

   I read your blog and thought your arguments were well founded. You have provided compelling evidence that both you and others referred to in newspaper reports have had money deducted from your credit cards by these people without your authority. This is either incompetence or theft and given the frequency you are entitled to believe it was no accident and say so publicly. You will have a defence to any libel claim that (a) it it true and (b) even if it isn’t, you published it in the public interest and acted responsibly so you have a defence of qualified privilege. I suggest you tell them this and say that if they can provide a persuasive explanation for all of this then you will consider taking down your blog but until they do so you have every legal right and indeed public duty to keep it up. Kind regards …

   So if Adaptive Affinity can provide a persuasive explanation for the abundance of online complaints about their actions then I will take the original post down.

9. David Craig Says:
   December 17th, 2010 at 22:26

   I agree they are a bunch of crooks, They waited a year before they took money from my wife’s account and cannot explain why. I intent taking them to the small claims court to recover the money and then asking the adjudicator to refer it to the police should I win. We all need to stick together and bring a joint action against them. This is the only way we can shut them down. Help clear these crooks out of cyber space.

10. Anna Burda Says:
    January 15th, 2011 at 12:29

    Don’t worry I now this company from my own expiriens and I now they actions are iligal, this action is cald Bait-and-switch and in England and Wales it is Banned under the Consumers Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Breaking this law can result in criminal prosecution, and unlimited fine and two years in jail. And now to this you can ad thretning behavior, wich is uswell cryminal act they want to fight then we need to united and get them down. Ow and you can add new company to your long list is cald QuickCreditScore.co.uk and Rewards Now.

11. Jerry Says:
    March 19th, 2011 at 19:19

    Let them take you to court and then punch them in their freaking nose.

12. Heather Says:
    April 14th, 2011 at 19:14

    They are also affiliated with http://www.quickcreditscore.com

    I recently responded to a Apartment rent. In the “realtor” response was this-

    First and foremost, thank you for your interest in the home. I am available to show the house this week
    if that fits your schedule.

    Just to give you a little more information about the home, the water, trash
    and garbage are paid by us. The security deposit can be paid in 2 installments if money is tight. (I know how that can be).
    The house has a fenced in backyard and we do allow pets. The deposit per pet is a one time payment.
    The house includes a washer and dryer, and we pay for lawn care so the renter does not have to cut the grass.
    There is NO application fee (our company policy and guarantee).

    I will be happy to show the house at an agreed upon time and date but I do require that all applicants and
    additional renters who will be living in the home complete a free credit report to ensure their eligibility.
    I have so many people apply for homes that I have to make sure they are qualified renters before I show the property.
    This ensures neither of us will be wasting our time.

    It is okay if you have bad credit (trust me). We just check to make sure that you don’t have several evictions on
    your record. (We won’t rent if you have 3 or more evictions on your record)

    I also had to recently stop giving out the exact address of rental properties before I am able to show them because
    last time I did that the house was vandalized (I will be glad to send you the address right after your reply) I assure
    you though that this is a very safe neighborhood. I actually lived in this home for 2 years (very cozy).

    As soon as you can, please click and go to the secure website link below to complete the free credit report: (takes about 30 seconds)
    Once you complete, I’ll call you once I receive the information from the credit company (very quickly usually).

    http://cvfreport.com/

    *** You don’t have to send me your credit report.
    Once you fill out the report the credit company automatically forwards me your name, email address and whether you have
    had any outstanding evictions in the past 5 years to determine your renter eligibility. This is the only information I am
    interested in. This is a soft credit report so it won’t touch your FICO score (which is why we work with them).

    This process turns some people off, so I completely understand if you decide not to complete them. In that case, good luck
    with your home search. I just want to be honest with you up front about our process, which does a good job of protecting
    us from ineligible renters and scammers. Also, the site above is one the safest and most secure website for credit reports in the
    world, which is good for peace of mind. I have worked with them personally for a couple years now.

    If you are truly interested in proceeding, take a moment and fill out one of the reports. Let me know when this is done and
    we can then work out the time and date to go see the home. Email me back once you access your fresh report. I will be forwarded
    the information. (Make sure to include a valid phone number. I usually call within 6 hours of submitting your report. Then I can
    forward you the address and we can set up a time to tour the home.)

    If eligible you will also be sent an email with my office number so we can set up a time to go see the house and discuss any
    other questions or concerns you may have.

    Thanks,
    Treva

    They have NO SHAME!!!! ***SCAMMERS*** are low life scum!!
    Everyone knows to use the 3 major credit agencies to obtain your credit
    report. Upon further research I found numerous forums outing quickcreditscore.com as a scam.

    Good luck

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