Tricky Situation - Advice Needed
Discussion
Two years ago I was in a business relationship that went sour fast. The short version is that I entered into a business that had been trading <6 months as a 1/3rd shareholder and director. I built the company up to the point that it was starting to turn some really nice profit and was then ejected by the other two shareholders (family members) who were now happy to cash in on the fact I worked virtually for free for a year to develop the business.
An agreement was drawn up and signed by all parties that basically paid me a pittance and tied up the loose ends. I (personally) have a reseller hosting account and had been hosting the company website. As part of the agreement, this was all transferred away two years ago. However, recently I audited my hosting account to see if there was any dead accounts I could remove. I discovered that I was hosting email/web space for an old URL relating to that previous business. The URL was redundant at the time, wasn't and isn't in my name or control and was not referred to or included in the legal agreement.
How this slipped through both parties 'net' is beyond me, but after the discovery I moved to delete the hosting space and forget about it. It was then that I noticed it was using 450MB of disk space and, as I had never built a website, it could only be the email. Sure enough, an old email I created for one of the other business partners was taking up the disk space. Again, I hovered over delete on the assumption that the email account was rammed with 2-years of spam.
To be on the safe side, I choose to double check so I reset the password in cPanel and accessed the account. It was immediately apparent that one of my previous business partners is and has been using the email account to conduct all business relating to the old company for the last two years. I must stress that I determined this from a cursory scan of the inbox and in less than 2 minutes. Despite the temptation to snoop, I logged out quickly.
My next action was to both email and text the account holder to make him aware that:
a) he had been using hosting space without authorisation and that no payment had been made for the hosting space
b) that I do not want payments for the last two years or going forward
c) that I would like him to move the account to an independent host within the next 30 days
d) that I had reset his passwords as part of my "investigation" into the unauthorised account
e) that I will happily re-instate the account with a temporary password to allow use of it until arrangements can be made to move host
I have heard nothing back for almost a week now and want to put this situation to bed. The advice I seek is, how do I get rid of this account as quickly as possible without doing anything that would open me up to any form of legal action?
My current thoughts are that I send him a recorded letter to his registered business address stating that I want the account moved and will close it within 30 days if there is no communication or negotiation for a longer period (which I'd only agree to if he was actively seeking to move the account). If I do this and hear nothing back can I legally delete the email account? Does anyone recommend any other course of action?
An agreement was drawn up and signed by all parties that basically paid me a pittance and tied up the loose ends. I (personally) have a reseller hosting account and had been hosting the company website. As part of the agreement, this was all transferred away two years ago. However, recently I audited my hosting account to see if there was any dead accounts I could remove. I discovered that I was hosting email/web space for an old URL relating to that previous business. The URL was redundant at the time, wasn't and isn't in my name or control and was not referred to or included in the legal agreement.
How this slipped through both parties 'net' is beyond me, but after the discovery I moved to delete the hosting space and forget about it. It was then that I noticed it was using 450MB of disk space and, as I had never built a website, it could only be the email. Sure enough, an old email I created for one of the other business partners was taking up the disk space. Again, I hovered over delete on the assumption that the email account was rammed with 2-years of spam.
To be on the safe side, I choose to double check so I reset the password in cPanel and accessed the account. It was immediately apparent that one of my previous business partners is and has been using the email account to conduct all business relating to the old company for the last two years. I must stress that I determined this from a cursory scan of the inbox and in less than 2 minutes. Despite the temptation to snoop, I logged out quickly.
My next action was to both email and text the account holder to make him aware that:
a) he had been using hosting space without authorisation and that no payment had been made for the hosting space
b) that I do not want payments for the last two years or going forward
c) that I would like him to move the account to an independent host within the next 30 days
d) that I had reset his passwords as part of my "investigation" into the unauthorised account
e) that I will happily re-instate the account with a temporary password to allow use of it until arrangements can be made to move host
I have heard nothing back for almost a week now and want to put this situation to bed. The advice I seek is, how do I get rid of this account as quickly as possible without doing anything that would open me up to any form of legal action?
My current thoughts are that I send him a recorded letter to his registered business address stating that I want the account moved and will close it within 30 days if there is no communication or negotiation for a longer period (which I'd only agree to if he was actively seeking to move the account). If I do this and hear nothing back can I legally delete the email account? Does anyone recommend any other course of action?
I'm not interested in money in the slightest. I think my biggest fear is that if I push the delete button I know from that cursory scan of the inbox he would be losing 2 years worth of business emails, records, contacts, conversations and quite possibly useful business data, etc. On the one hand I think, "well, he never paid for the service and he should have known better." However, I also know he'd probably come after me for his "losses" and I don't know where I stand legally. Suppose you built a massive database on a 3rd party platform and failed to make your payments. Can that 3rd party just delete everything when you miss a payment with no come back?
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