I'm no big legal expert, but I'm pretty sure that what #SignRequest is doing is at least borderline illegal.
Many of you have probably used #SignRequest over the past decade. Together with #DocuSign, it is the most commonly used platform when it comes to sending and signing contracts.
Many of us probably have our signed employment contracts stored on these platforms. And, you know, your employment contract is something that you may be asked in quite a number of circumstances, and it's good to store it in a reliable place.
These platforms came on the scene with the promise of lifting the burden of physical signatures, printing and storing paper contracts, or storing digital contracts in safe ways on the user side. "Are you worried of how to keep all of your contracts in a safe place? Do you want the ability to reliably send and sign contracts around, without requiring people to meet in person? Then just hop on board, and we'll take care of everything!"
With this promise in mind, I was justifiably confused when I read this email in my box saying "Your SignRequest account will be terminated soon because of inactivity". What? Many of my employment contracts signed in the past 10 years are stored there! You can't wipe them just because I haven't looked back at them in the past year!
So I did what everyone would do when threatened by an account termination notice because of inactivity: I logged in to the portal. All of my contracts were still there - except, they are now grayed out. Do I want to see or export any document I've signed more than a year ago? No problema, just sign in for a free professional trial, and then it'll only be 9 euros a month per account!
I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can give a big fart on these aggressive marketing campaigns. I am paranoid enough to immediately download and backup any important documents other people's computers spit at me on my own self-hosted cloud, as if they were afraid that they'll disappear within seconds if I wait too long.
But what if I weren't so careful? What if you are somebody who really bought into the promise that somebody's cloud will forever take care of your signed legal documents, and you didn't perform a local backup?
They didn't even bother to communicate anything like "hey, we're switching to a professional plan for historical document access, so download all of your documents before this date if you don't want to lose access to your old documents". Had they sent out such a communication, a lot of people would have obviously signed in and exported everything before they started to get billed, and that's not in the company's financial interest. They'd better keep silent about the change, and next time you sign (maybe because you need to send documentation about your previous jobs to a new employer) you have no choice but to pay the ransom required to access your data.
What if you missed the account closure notice and your account was terminated overnight, together with all of your documents? What if you're unemployed and/or without a credit card, and you just have no way of accessing your past employment contracts with a potential new employer?
This is an aggressive ransom campaign run by a million-dollar funded company against your personal legal documents. I'm pretty sure that it's also illegal beyond being immoral: most of the EU countries have laws in place to ensure access to your own legal documents, without having to sign up to commercial plans. And we also have legal retention policies that usual don't include "the user hasn't logged in to your website for the past 11 months" among their clauses. But, again, I'm no legal expert - and if somebody out there is, feel free to confirm/falsify my "legal gut feeling".
In the meantime:
1. ALWAYS save on your own systems any employment contracts and other legal documents signed/shared through these platforms. You may be unable to access them later. All it takes is a new director joining the company and deciding to experiment with a new monetization strategy just because some impatient investors asked for returns during the last quarterly meeting.
2. Invite those who share these documents with you to use other platforms instead - or maybe the dear old certified email.
Same here. #Docusign #DocusignOutage
RT @SAMaverickUSA@twitter.com
What is going on with DocuSign?? Error messages. #DocuSign
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/SAMaverickUSA/status/1529190731142791169
I am experiencing it too. You are not alone #Docusign #DocusignOutage
RT @constantlymeh@twitter.com
Is anyone else experiencing @DocuSign@twitter.com being down? #DocuSign
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/constantlymeh/status/1529193106712604672
#DocuSign @DocuSign@twitter.com are you having an outage right now? I keep getting "Something went wrong".
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