• Case Number: a20160621.1
• Status: closed
• Claimant: Sebastian B
• Respondent: CAcert

• initial Case Manager: PietStarreveld

• Case Manager: PietStarreveld

• Arbitrator: EvaStöwe

• Date of arbitration start: 2016-06-28
• Date of ruling: 2016-06-29
• Case closed: 2016-06-30
• Complaint: Email dispute on locked account
• Relief: C able to add the email address that resulted in the the dispute if he so chooses

Before: Arbitrator: EvaStöwe (A), Respondent: CAcert (R), Claimant: Sebastian B (C), Case: a20160621.1

History Log

• 2016-06-21 (issue.c.o): case [s20150910.42]
• 2016-06-21 (iCM): added to wiki, request for CM / A

• 2016-06-27 (CM): pick up case mail, select EvaStöwe as A

• 2016-06-27 (CM): request Support for basic information on the account
• 2016-06-28 (CM): answer received from Support
• 2016-06-28 (A): request Support for additional information on the account
• 2016-06-28 (CM): answer received from Support to additional questions of A
• 2016-06-28 (CM): init mailing
• 2016-06-28 (A): possible account deletion bug, request Critical team to investigate
• 2016-06-29 (CM): received reply from Critical team
• 2016-06-29 (A): confirms reply of Critical team and thanks them
• 2016-06-29 (A): ruling
• 2016-06-29 (C): question 1 about ruling
• 2016-06-29 (A): reply to question 1
• 2016-06-29 (C): question 2 about ruling
• 2016-06-29 (A): reply to question 2
• 2016-06-29 (C): question 3 about ruling
• 2016-06-29 (A): reply to question 3

• 2016-06-29 (A): created Bug Tracker: ID 1415: treat deleted emails like free emails in email disputes functionality

• 2016-06-30 (CM): close case

Private Part

• Link to Arbitration case a20160621.1 (Private Part), Access for (CM) + (A) only

EOT Private Part

Original Dispute

• Someone has just attempted to dispute this email '[...]@[...]', which
  belongs to a locked account:
  Username(ID): Sebastian B[...]
  email: [...]@[...]
  IP/Hostname: [...]/[...]

Discovery

About the original dispute

The claimant tried to dispute an email within the CAcert software, because he believes that the email belongs to him.

This is an option to do if an email that one owns for some reason is in an account of somebody else. Normally this leads to a mail to the owner of the other account who then could delete it if he agrees that the email should be in the other account.

But if the account with the disputed email is blocked, the owner of that account cannot delete the email. Because of this a notification about this situation is created.

The dispute of this case was based on such a notification.

Information collected by investigation

• The disputed email was mentioned to belong to an account that is deleted, which is the reason for it being logged.
• Support could not find the email in that account.
• Critical team confirmed that the email is mentioned in the context of that account but is marked to be deleted. It cannot be seen by any user of CAcert software, any more.
• The delete account procedure does not delete everything, some data is only made unavailable because of legal requirements, which seems to be the case for email addresses.
• According to the investigation of Critical team it should be possible to add that email address to another account in the normal way. The according functionality allows this for "deleted" email addresses.
• This was confirmed by a software assessor who did some testing on the test-sever.
• The email dispute functionality however seems to assume that one only tries to dispute an email if one does not succeed to add an email address in the normal way so it does not check for deletion.
• This is considered to be a bug, because by this one could learn about former users email addresses which should not be the case.

Deliberation

The claiming user should be able to add the requested email to his account by normal means and without an email dispute. If necessary support could be asked for further information how to do this. According to the investigation of critical team this should be sufficient in this case.

The same should be true for comparable situations where the accounts are blocked because of deletion, so a sensible answer to such tickets for support could be to inform users about this possibility. If this does not work the account is probably blocked for other reasons and it has to be handled by Arbitration.

As the email dispute functionality does not work correctly it is sensible to create a bug in the bug-tracker so that the email dispute treats deleted email addresses the same as free email addresses.

Ruling

1. The member should be able to add the email address to his account himself. No further arbitration activity is necessary in this regard, as far as can seen. If necessary support can provide further help.

2. Support is asked to inform other users in comparable situations about the above possibility that it may be possible to add the email address without dispute if it belongs to a deleted account. If this does not work, the case probably has to be handled by Arbitration.

3. A bug should be created in the bug-tracker to update the email dispute functionality so that it treats deleted email addresses like free email addresses.

Eva Stöwe - 2016-06-29

Execution

• 2016-06-29 (A): ruling

• 2016-06-29 (A): created Bug Tracker: ID 1415: treat deleted emails like free emails in email disputes functionality

Similiar Cases

Email Disputes

Comparable Domain Disputes

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• CategoryArbitration

• CategoryArbCaseEmailDispute