help Possible Legal Issues with Professional Website Developers?

[Beau_B]

This is going to be a little difficult to understand, so I have shortened it down to what you need to know so you lovely people can help.

 

So, I am helping my mother create her new Real Estate company. I created a website on Squarespace (cause it looks fantastic ;)) and off I went, making sure everything was protected with a password. However, we bought into some software/RE stuff for our company that is industry standard for where I live, but it is packaged with a website builder online (whether you want it or not, and they do most of the work). I took off all the passwords for these people so they could have a look at my site. When they looked at it, said that it looked fantastic, and said they would replicate it as closely as possible...

 

The next Monday (which is the one that has just passed), we got a text from an inside source at the company my mother had just been fired from. They said that their management had just looked at our website... So I freaked out, went onto Squarespace, and hid everything from public view. However, nothing on that Analytics page said anything about anyone viewing certain pages that this person said they had.

 

Fast forward to today. The website these people created looks not even half as good as the one I did (not saying mine was amazing - their was horrendous) and after requesting they make some changes, they half-assed it and came back to say that I have to do everything myself (including things only they can do because their builder is balls). I was working on it for a while, but had to stop when my mother's new colleagues turned up for a scheduled training session. During the training session, one of them googled our company name, and found that our demo website (with private, sensitive information that definitely should not be displayed), created by the people who sold us this package, was on the front page.

 

I checked the activity log (after a while of trying to find it), and sure enough, there was activity on the very same day we got this insider information. So, these people from my mother's old company, were able to see who she was going to be working with (including someone who had just quit working for them to come join my mother) and our sales strategy, including other things.

 

Other than being absolutely furious at this company, is there anything we can legally do if this causes damage to my mother's company (which very well could happen, considering we are still a while away from going live)? It took the company a few hours to sort out this issue, but they have made it private now.

 

TL;DR

I created a website for our new company, made it private. This other company asked to replicate our website to make it easier for us later on, so I made mine public. Got a text from someone we know that their management had just seen the website, so I made mine private again. Found out the website they viewed was the one this other company had replicated, even though it was meant to be a demo and we thought it was completely private. Now other companies in our city know what our sales plan is, who is in our team, and what we will be doing. Is this as big of a problem as I think it is, or should I just let it blow over now that this company has fixed the issue and made it private?

 

Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated. I understand that this is a very specific issue, and know that I probably won't get much help.

[Beau_B]

16 minutes ago, Beau_B said:

It took the company a few hours to sort out this issue, but they have made it private now

Update - It is still on Google. They have not made it private yet... Well, either that or it will take some time.

[billstelling]

If you did not authorize it to be made public then they are liable for any damages created as a result. If she lost her job over it, they are liable for that as well as a result of them leaking your site before it was ready. The only time I ever put one I am working on live is behind a required login to see it and only viewable by the customer. Once all the work is done and the client ok's it, the site gets set live for the public. I would sue them for breach of contract if it was me..

 

No site goes live until it is ready, unless it's with a sub par mass site builder like they are that does not know what they are doing.. One of the first and most important things when building a site is security. They failed out of  the gate, big time..

[Beau_B]

6 minutes ago, billstelling said:

If you did not authorize it to be made public then they are liable for any damages created as a result. If she lost her job over it, they are liable for that as well as a result of them leaking your site before it was ready. The only time I ever put one I am working on live is behind a required login to see it and only viewable by the customer. Once all the work is done and the client ok's it, the site gets set live for the public. I would sue them for breach of contract if it was me..

 

No site goes live until it is ready, unless it's with a sub par mass site builder like they are that does not know what they are doing.. One of the first and most important things when building a site is security. They failed out of  the gate, big time..

Thank you for your insite. She definitely didn't lose her job because of it, but it is very possible that there could be some legal issues arise if they find a loophole through her, and my father's, old agreement (as there are about another 20 anecdotes that go along with this).

 

I will have a look through the contract and there is a section on this.

 

Thank you for your help!

Edited June 21, 2018 by Beau_B
Factual Change (Was unsure, now am sure)

[Beau_B]

Update

It got to the point where we threatened legal action, as they said it would take days to be removed from google. As soon as they saw that, the website was taken away immediately.

 

One of my good friends are telling me that they probably are using a third-party system like Wordpress. Not sure if this is true, but if so, that seems a bit sketchy. Glad to be away from these people, though, and will follow up with legal action now that they have allowed our competitors to see our information and commissions before we were going live.

 

They were about to charge us $1,200. Looks like we might not need to pay for that now...

[billstelling]

Good to hear.. If you have any issues with what you have going on with the current site, let me know, I might be able to offer some insight or help you get things the way you want them.

[Beau_B]

2 minutes ago, billstelling said:

If you have any issues with what you have going on with the current site, let me know

When our proper website goes live, I may get some people like you on just to test. Not really anything tech related. Very much just Real Estate.

I am also very new to this, so it will never be perfect. However, in my opinion, it looks pretty nice.

 

Thanks for letting me know I may get in touch with you one day in the future!

[minibois]

That was a pretty wild story. I don't have much to add, other than; be sure to keep all email conversations backed up in case you might need them later, just like the activity log on your website.

And good luck to your mother on the business!

[LogicalDrm]

First thing to do here would be getting lawyer who knows your local laws to look over contracts made and any ToS and/or Privacy Policy that company has. If they have breached their own set of rules, they have little to none chances in court. And this sure sounds like pretty big breach of customer privacy protection. Usually they have something about keeping private info private unless customer specifically asks for it. And they would want such request in black and white in case something goes wrong.

 

Can you get something out of this? Well, depends on what your lawyer recommends. And how laws treat consumer protection. If there's major loss of revenue for your mother, then it might be good to give out threat of legal actions. But at least demand of refund for the hassle they have caused. Thats just bad business from their part, and quick leak to professional journal of that area of expertise could make it really bad for their business going forward.

[billstelling]

7 hours ago, Beau_B said:

When our proper website goes live, I may get some people like you on just to test. Not really anything tech related. Very much just Real Estate.

I am also very new to this, so it will never be perfect. However, in my opinion, it looks pretty nice.

 

Thanks for letting me know I may get in touch with you one day in the future!

I would be happy to take a look and bug check for you. I'm considered a front end developer and have redesigned a few sites like the Futuremark forum and others.I built the vB4 forum for them along with 16 styles that were used a few years and then dumped in preparation of them closing down after the sale to UL. I'm a CSS specialist but do it all like HTML, java and whatnot.

I was supposed to redo Guru3D again a couple years ago but life kept me from taking that one on. I did the style they still use today for them years ago.. I feel bad about it as he still has not done anything with it yet, but that is the problem with using a product instead of designing and coding a site from the ground up. You have to work within the product and it is very time consuming on huge sites like his. Couple that with a 10 year old product and you can begin to see the complexity of bringing it up to modern standards.

 

 

[Beau_B]

13 hours ago, Minibois said:

be sure to keep all email conversations backed up

I have all my emails and back forth with their support saved, along with a video recording of the website on Google (including going through it). Just thought that might be necessary since they put it back online after a few hours of nothing. It does require a password to see it now, but why was that never done at the very beginning?????

 

Thank you for your advise, though! And thanks for the support with the business, we really appreciate it!

[Beau_B]

11 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

First thing to do here would be getting lawyer who knows your local laws

We contacted our personal lawyer immediately. Not heard anything back from him yet, but he is pretty good. We also didn't explain the whole situation fully, because it was only one email. But yes, we are getting lawyers involved.

11 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

this sure sounds like pretty big breach of customer privacy protection

Definitely. I have to go away for the weekend, but will be taking the contract with me to read over. I'm interested in what their contract says specifically, since they don't even specialize in web development. Another point on web dev - I had a friend look at their websites, and he confirmed that even their websites are all templates from a 3rd party. Very strange for web developers to use a template themselves, I thought....

11 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

at least demand of refund for the hassle they have caused

We had not paid them yet, but this is what we will be trying to get out of. If we can not pay them because of the damages and embarrassment caused, we will have some more money to invest in other places

 

Thank you for all your advice! I will talk to my mother about all of this today.

[Beau_B]

9 hours ago, billstelling said:

I would be happy to take a look and bug check for you. I'm considered a front end developer and have redesigned a few sites like the Futuremark forum and others.I built the vB4 forum for them along with 16 styles that were used a few years and then dumped in preparation of them closing down after the sale to UL. I'm a CSS specialist but do it all like HTML, java and whatnot.

I was supposed to redo Guru3D again a couple years ago but life kept me from taking that one on. I did the style they still use today for them years ago.. I feel bad about it as he still has not done anything with it yet, but that is the problem with using a product instead of designing and coding a site from the ground up. You have to work within the product and it is very time consuming on huge sites like his. Couple that with a 10 year old product and you can begin to see the complexity of bringing it up to modern standards.

 

 

You definitely sound like you have had your fair share in the industry. I also understand how it can be extremely challenging and competitive. You would be a good critic for our website, as long as you keep in mind that we are a very small business who operates in a town of 70,000 and that's it