Received an email earlier from my ISP to tell me that they have signed me up to a 1 month Nord subscription and if I didn’t cancel it, it would start charging me.
Think this might be borderline illegal.
Yeah, if this went down as OP describes, I’d be pretty surprised if it wasn’t illegal.
I feel this should absolutely be illegal. I hope Ofcom take action.
Full thread on Twitter: https://x.com/danielcroe/status/1826264669042233552
I would change ISPs at the earliest opportunity, assuming you aren’t bought into a contract with prohibitive termination fees or if you only have one ISP in the area. Randomly adding paid services without customer consent is highly suspect and I would expect more shady things down the line.
https://ofcomlive.my.salesforce-sites.com/formentry/SitesFormCCTMonitoring
Fill out this form for Ofcom records, if enough people do it they’ll investigate the company which might afford some protection for those who don’t notice this within the 30 days.
If this isn’t illegal it needs to be
Is it even legal in the sense that they have given your data to NordVPN for you to get the free trial without your permission? Is this not a GDPR breach and it is an unnecessary use of your data? Even if the terms state that they can share with third parties, it’s only legal if it is necessary…
Not sure about the details of UK law, but I am used that you can only be charged when there is a contract. And a contract requires explicit intent from both parties.
If that happened to me, I’d tell them that either *they* fix things or I will simply have my bank undo the transaction. Which is a lot of work to them, and they can’t do shit against me without having a contract.
[Note: I’d obviously check the legalities thrice before doing so.]
Now you can’t sue them if your wife dies at NordVPNLand
Onestream love doing this, reusing your credit card details to sign you up for services you didn’t ask for. Took several months and an intervention from the ombudsman to rectify my situation. Also took over a year to complete a subject access request, whilst the call centre reps had never heard of GDPR.
Thank you for this. With Onestream also, and didn’t realise I had to opt in the cancellation. So certainly saved me a fiver!
Pretty damn stupid and underhand if you ask me.
That might be illegal in some countries.
If your ISP signed you up, they ought to pay the subscription fee
“As a valued customer, we’re offering the opportunity to send your data, unencrypted, through a private company’s private servers and we trust them to not look at it.”
Personally, I’d love to wait it out, having a lawyer waiting to go with the suit. The FTC also will have an opinion about this.
So not sure how honest this is but first I phoned the uk data protection she agreed reading email they had broken rules so I opened a case. I then phoned Onestream and spoke to a British man called Allan who told me that apparently the email was misleading as you have to click the link to the Nord VPN to activate your free trial and only then would data be shared with Nord VPN and payment taken at end of trial. He agreed on phone had I been opted in was against rules and have had email reassurance that no I will not be charged and no I am not on Nord VPN or Mcafee or one stream assured. So feel mixed as Onestream email and some of staff seem to say one thing and this Allan says another. I will lodge the complaint with data protection as lady reckons it need to be investigated asap
Maybe the wording is just awkward - it looks like you need to actually sign up at the link in the email to activate the trial.
I’m raising a co plaint demanding a deadlock letter and off to ombudsman
Pretty sure that’s illegal.
NAL but I’m pretty sure this is illegal honestly.