united-states criminal-law legal-concepts local-authorities
Is investigative intimidation illegal?
<p>I had an account a 'redacted' closed and they have told me that they are investigating my account and seeing if legal action needs to be taken. I take this as a deliberate threat of legal intimidation. No one should tell me I am being investigated unless I am already proven guilty of a crime -- that's corporate legal intimidation. I do not wish to be subjected in this manner. </p>

<p>What are my options for revenge against said company 'redacted' for their statement to me?</p>

<p>It would imply that they have full power over whether I am subjected to criminal prosecution because they claim they have the power to "investigate" anything I've done and report it. It's very easily simple that they can ignore any info and mind their own business if it does not harm them.</p>

<p>I take this action as legal bullying and intimidation by a rich company to punish a poor person.</p>

<p>"No one should tell me I am being investigated unless I am already proven guilty of a crime" - you realise that the police <em>must</em> tell you you are being investigated? If they talk to you as a witness to a crime, and you let something slip that makes you a suspect, they will <em>immediately</em> stop and read you your rights. And the only time you will be "proven guilty of a crime" is when you are in court, at the end of a trial, and the judge told you so. People are quite happy to be told they are investigated a bit before this. </p>

<p>You have done something that upset this company. They think what you have done <em>might</em> force them to take legal action. Whether they tell you or not, that legal action can be taken, so you are no worse off because of the notification. On the other hand, by telling you they advice you that what you did was <em>close</em> to getting you into real trouble. So you <em>might</em> think twice about doing the same or worse with a different company. </p>

<p>That's like a shop seeing you take a bar of chocolate, and telling you that this time they won't call the police, but they will if it happens again. Perfectly fine. </p>

<p>Sue them and start filing interrogatories to discover what they are doing, if you are serious.  But realistically this is - well, you were there, you know what it is.    Generally there are three tiers of consequence for being scummy on the internet: </p>

<ul>
<li><p>TOSsed out: your account gets canceled and you get banned off the service. The apocryphal example is getting your WoW account cancelled for botting, or scamming users for in-game gold.  Another is exercising your "freedom of speech" on somebody else's freedom of press.  </p></li>
<li><p>somebody sues you in civil court: the consequences are being ordered by a judge to do something, stop doing something, or hand over US dollars, to pay penalties or the other guy's legal fees. Consequences stop with that, and they can't take your money if you don't have it to spare.  It's impossible to go to jail unless you really, really try, and generally, testosterone poisoning and a fair dose of sociopathy is involved.  The developers of a WoW botting system got sued, and lost.  Nobody went to jail but they probably had to file bankruptcy to sever the civil judgment and get their life back.  </p></li>
<li><p>you commit actual criminal <em>crimes</em> online, such as threatening someone's life and safety, or defrauding someone of <em>actual</em> gold.  At that point you get to meet the local police, get a free ride in a police car, get fingerprinted, arraigned, all that jazz like on <em>Law and Order</em>. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>So when you get the "closed pending investigation" thing, it is almost always the first one.  However, it's none of our business but you know what you did, so you know (or reasonably ought to know) what's coming.  If you have no earthly idea what's coming, maybe you should have a lawyer guide you on use of the Internet. </p>

<p>Absolutely nothing about this is illegal (for their part). They have every right to close your account (freedom of the press belongs to them that owns one, Godaddy sells presses for $12 these days).  Locking you out of your account creates a big question: why, and so they certainly must have the right to tell you honestly why.  </p>
