I'll be the one to say it then.<p>It's a trap!<p>Don't do anything without an attorney. The Monday deadline is to ensure you don't stop and think of that option.<p>Do not respond.<p>Call an attorney. Let the attorney write the response, if any. Don't send a potential adversary evidence they don't have and don't try to figure this out yourself without professional legal advice.<p>Consider the legal fees insurance against an irrational amount of future awfulness.
Do you have some old full-sized SCSI 40MB drive lying around? It'd be amusing to see them trying to connect that to any modern computer... <a href="http://www.biocomp.net/seagate_st4766n.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.biocomp.net/seagate_st4766n.jpg</a>
So they want you to send them your physical hard drive, presumably to assure themselves that the data has been erased...<p>But then they also want you to 'delete any data in your possession', so they already know that that is bullshit.
Web scraping may be against the terms of use of some websites. The enforceability of these terms is unclear.[5] While outright duplication of original expression will in many cases be illegal, in the United States the courts ruled in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service that duplication of facts is allowable. U.S. courts have acknowledged that users of "scrapers" or "robots" may be held liable for committing trespass to chattels,[6][7] which involves a computer system itself being considered personal property upon which the user of a scraper is trespassing. The best known of these cases, eBay v. Bidder's Edge, resulted in an injunction ordering Bidder's Edge to stop accessing, collecting, and indexing auctions from the eBay web site. This case involved automatic placing of bids, known as auction sniping. However, in order to succeed on a claim of trespass to chattels, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant intentionally and without authorization interfered with the plaintiff's possessory interest in the computer system and that the defendant's unauthorized use caused damage to the plaintiff. Not all cases of web spidering brought before the courts have been considered trespass to chattels.[8]
Will you be in any way released from legal liability by complying?<p>This sounds like "We don't quite have enough evidence that you did it, please admit to it fully so we have enough to throw the book at you".
So all these ignore it comments are generally ok but it depends on who you're dealing with. Remember that TOS violations are covered under the CFAA, CL has a reputation for this sort of behavior.
Some more context here: <a href="https://twitter.com/recborg/status/482629723663507456" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/recborg/status/482629723663507456</a><p>> @redheadjessica it's a business with a physical location that I sometimes frequent - they'd ban me from it.<p>[edit: I wonder if the pages scraped a publicly accessible. Maybe they are only accessible on LAN while at said location? This might put an interesting twist on things (as everyone here is just assuming a site accessible on the public Internet.]
Gut instinct is that that looks like a nigerian-scam level email. Not quite sure what they are fishing for or what they hope to get out of the disk they want you to send but I'd just ignore it. Almost certainly that will be the end of it. If they escalate to a real lawyer contacting you by paper mail, then look into a quick consult with a local attorney to see what if anything you should do.<p>But do stop scraping the site and stay clear of any involvement with it in the future.
Why would you post the text of such an absurd claim and not name who it is? Do you really fear them that much / desire to use their services that much that you would put up with this?
How did they link up your visits/scrapes to an email in the first place? You shouldn't have responded to the emails. If they're serious, I would think they would/will have sent certified mail. Then you can take it seriously, but not until then.
as a condition demand a signed letter of the cease and desist that includes releasing you of legal liabilitie to be sent to yourself and the state attorney to be signed on delivery.
It might be fun to mess with them a little, but if they send you any real legal threats consult an attorney, and don't reply to any more of their email's.
does an email attachment with their data constitute returning it to these people? You may not need to go to all the trouble of dropping off your hard drive.<p>But in all seriousness, enjoy your new toilet paper because that's all that letter is good for!