Factoring industry leaders have made recent overtures towards needed ethics reforms, but they can’t be taken too seriously without the industry properly addressing the root cause of most abuses: court record scraping. We’ve talked about this before. It’s still the number one driver of annuitant harassment and foul, even abusive, business practices. It all stems from access to online legal databases and use of these databases for purposes that are blatantly violating their terms of use at best, and explicitly illegal at worst. For example, these databases specifically prohibit:

Commercial Exploitation – Database firms state that their services are intended for legal, business or scholarly research and analysis. 

…data may not be used for commercial solicitations, marketing, fundraising, or other similar activities.

You will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, download, store, further transmit, disseminate, transfer, or otherwise exploit this website

…whose primary purpose is to perform professional, business or educational, research and analysis, and you are working in a court or government agency; a professional or business corporation, organization or other similar entity

The Content on this Web Site is for your personal use only and not for commercial exploitation.

Legal Violations – Database firms prohibit their services from being used to break the law, but the scraping of these databases is the proximate cause of the relentless phone solicitations that are, for the most part, violations of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). 

You will not use, intentionally or unintentionally any of the content, information, or services on this website in a manner contrary to or in violation of any applicable international, national, federal, state, or local law, rule, or regulation having the force of law.

…and shall not be used for any illegal purpose or in any manner inconsistent with the provisions of these TOS.

Derivative Works – These firms do not allow users to sell products created from their databases, but there are several firms that glean these databases to offer prospect lists of annuitants. 

You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content, software, materials, or Site in whole or in part.

You may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, rent, lease, loan, sell, sublicense, or create derivative works from this Web Site or the Content.

…share, recompile, decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or make or distribute any other form of, or any derivative work from, the Services, or Content, or any portion thereof;

You shall not sell, license, or distribute Content (including Downloaded Content) to third parties or use Content as a component of or as a basis for any material offered for sale, license, or distribution.

Ultimately, factoring is a legitimate service for certain annuitants in need of liquidity. We maintain that annuitants should be the ones who reach out if they choose to explore that option. Instead, they are constantly subjected to high pressure solicitations through phone calls, junk mail, social media stalking, and even front door visits, all based on information scraped from these databases. 

It needs to stop.

Either online databases need to start enforcing their terms of use or the factoring industry needs to be regulated. Which would you rather have, and which is likely to happen first? Don’t just let us know, let the database providers know. Annuitants will thank you.