To whom are you selling my details?
Knowledgable in tech, but perhaps too trusting at other things 
I guess my first question would be - did ACS have your number in the first place? Where your details amongst those handed over by Plusnet?
My general thoughts on lawyers are that you can trust them when they're on your side - so long as you understand the thought processes going on in their head. Legal logic isn't the same as technology logic, so things aren't quite so plain.
If the lawyer is on someone else's side, then don't trust them at all, because they're playing to an unknown agenda - which might be a different agenda from their client, and might be different from anything stated.
The closest attention I pay to anything really legal is the SCO vs Novell argument that's been going on in the US. The war is about Linux, but the initial battle is over ownership of Unix copyrights. Its been going on for 8 years, with SCO going into banckruptcy in order to continue the fight, even though they weren't bankrupt. Its an unholy nightmare, and has proven it is a world that isn't inhabitted by ordinary logic and common sense.
It is a world where the right answer is probably eventually reachable - but only if you don't fall foul of some arcane legal technicality, and you have enough money to keep feeding the system, the patience of a saint and the tenacity of a bulldog. The UK system can kill off fatuous legal action quicker than the US, but it is still slow & expensive, and full of arcanary.
So... I broadly wouldn't trust ACS or the people they represented in any way. If I could trust that they wanted to keep practicing law in the future, I'd expect they'd have *some* amount of respect for the judges, so wouldn't do something *obviously & traceably* wrong with the details they got hold of. But now the whole shebang is up in the air, it might be a way they are trying to recoup some money
But my lack of trust is a long way from actually suspecting them. I don't think there has been enough evidence pointing their way.
After all, the scam on getting text messages related to accident claims was big enough to get mentioned on Watchdog the other day. It looks like it is using lists way bigger than the ACS thing.
But frankly, they could easily be buying the details from some list broker somewhere, or even plausibly just using random numbers. It is about 3p-4p per message sent, so everything just depends on the statistics of hour many people respond, and how many numbers are illegal, compared with the profit from each scammed person.
I guess my first question would be - did ACS have your number in the first place? Where your details amongst those handed over by Plusnet?
My general thoughts on lawyers are that you can trust them when they're on your side - so long as you understand the thought processes going on in their head. Legal logic isn't the same as technology logic, so things aren't quite so plain.
If the lawyer is on someone else's side, then don't trust them at all, because they're playing to an unknown agenda - which might be a different agenda from their client, and might be different from anything stated.
The closest attention I pay to anything really legal is the SCO vs Novell argument that's been going on in the US. The war is about Linux, but the initial battle is over ownership of Unix copyrights. Its been going on for 8 years, with SCO going into banckruptcy in order to continue the fight, even though they weren't bankrupt. Its an unholy nightmare, and has proven it is a world that isn't inhabitted by ordinary logic and common sense.
It is a world where the right answer is probably eventually reachable - but only if you don't fall foul of some arcane legal technicality, and you have enough money to keep feeding the system, the patience of a saint and the tenacity of a bulldog. The UK system can kill off fatuous legal action quicker than the US, but it is still slow & expensive, and full of arcanary.
So... I broadly wouldn't trust ACS or the people they represented in any way. If I could trust that they wanted to keep practicing law in the future, I'd expect they'd have *some* amount of respect for the judges, so wouldn't do something *obviously & traceably* wrong with the details they got hold of. But now the whole shebang is up in the air, it might be a way they are trying to recoup some money
But my lack of trust is a long way from actually suspecting them. I don't think there has been enough evidence pointing their way.
After all, the scam on getting text messages related to accident claims was big enough to get mentioned on Watchdog the other day. It looks like it is using lists way bigger than the ACS thing.
But frankly, they could easily be buying the details from some list broker somewhere, or even plausibly just using random numbers. It is about 3p-4p per message sent, so everything just depends on the statistics of hour many people respond, and how many numbers are illegal, compared with the profit from each scammed person.
