
Ask HN: A company gave my business data to a client without consent. Can I sue? - yosapp
Ask HN: A company gave my business data to a client without consent. Can I sue?<p>Any lawyer recommendations along with advice would be very helpful.<p>I run a marketing consulting agency that purchases ad inventory from another ad agency. I then resell this inventory to my consulting clients.<p>One of my clients contacted the ad agency that my consultancy uses (they figured out who I used) and requested data from my business account relating to their website. The ad agency gave them impression data and the financial costs that my company incurred for those impressions. This was done without my consent.<p>I was told before in writing that no one would be able to access my account except myself. Also from their privacy and data policy on their website this is made clear as well. My client is not a part of my company and the account is under my own company name. However my clients website name is listed in my clients section of my account.<p>After my client received the data including the costs I incurred (I mark up the prices) they decided to terminate their relationship with my company and purchase direct from the ad agency. This was a client for over 5 years, my largest client, and has ruined my company.<p>Am I able to sue the ad agency and reach a financial settlement of some kind? Their actions have ruined my business financially and I&#x27;m not sure what will happen with me personally because of this. Further, is what they have done illegal? Perhaps against US or GDPR data laws? I am a US company and they sent the data to Europe.<p>Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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bryanrasmussen
This sounds way to complicated to solicit advice on HN about, however there
are definite things that you should probably go talk to a lawyer about to get
clarified what your options are. Especially that told in writing part, if you
have the communication and the context was something to do with signing a
contract with the agency they may very well be screwed.

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yosapp
Thanks for the response. I figured this would be much too complicated for
direct advice on HN. However, I posted here because the company has been
talked about a lot on HN before and I wasn't sure if any lawyers were here
with experience in tech/data who would reach out. Frankly, I'm not even sure
what kind of lawyer to contact.

