The legalities of buying a website

[Al]

Has anyone given due consideration to the legalities of buying a website? Specifically the user data held by that website. If the privacy policy of the site states:

“…will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your explicit permission or are required by law to do so.”

…is it still legal to sell?

What about merging or moving databases? These all contain private user data which is governed – depending upon which country you’re in by law. In the UK/EU this is GDPR.

I had a conversation recently with someone about the legalities of buying a forum database which contains user data (email addresses, dates of birth). The suggestion was that this was prevented by the privacy policy.

Has anyone ever ran into any legal issues with the transference of personal data between entities? I’m interested to hear of your experiences.

 

[Good-Person]

This all depends on the local laws. Most of the countries have a law regarding this and they may get prosecuted if they sell the data. However, some countries may not have any specific law related to this and you may need to consult a legal adviser. I would always be reluctant to provide my personal data to any kind of site, no matter how reliable it may seem.

 

[Kane]

Well, I have that line included in my privacy policy document but when I sell websites, I have never considered that clause. That's because the websites I have sold do not contain personally identifying data, well my customers have used emails, address and in some case payment information, therefore, it might not be legal to see my website with customer information but let's look into bigger scene. When Musk bought Twitter, he got access to user data not in hundreds and thousands but in millions. If he can get away with this, we also can get away with this.