Ex misuses my email for his utility account. Can I change it myself?

Question

My ex from back in 2015 has used my email address for his electricity account. He's in Arkansas; I live in California. Back in 2016 I kept receiving emails in regards to the account. I contacted him and asked him to change the email multiple times to no avail. Well apparently he move to a new place after getting out of jail I believe?

Anyway, I received an email for him moving his account to the new address. I've contacted the company and was told they can't do anything themselves unless he says so. Irritated, I called him and left a voice mail telling him to please change the email and that this is not a negative message and just please asking him to do it. Even after years he still has not changed and will not answer or do what I pleaded.

Will I get in trouble for changing my email to a different one? If he were to ask for the email and password to the new email I would gladly give it to him no issue. Would I get in legal trouble even thought I've asked him multiple times and tried to contact other sources to help me?

Answer 1

It appears from your description that you have in mind abandoning your email account (possibly closing it) and opening a new account. You have no obligation to continue using an email account that causes problems for you. Simply abandoning the account is not the wisest choice, since there is some chance that someone may gain access to the account and they do bad things with it. You are not liable for things that others do with your email, but it may be a nuisance to establish that it was someone else who used your account to do bad things. It is possible that, under the terms of service associated with that account, you are not allowed to "share" the account.

Your comments contrarily suggests that you want to change the email associated with that electric service account, despite the fact that the company refuses to do it for you, which is also a standard refusal. If so, the alternative question seems to be, can you legally log into that account (assuming that you know the password to the electric account), and change the email address to something else. This would almost certainly be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because you are not authorized to access that account – it's not your account, despite your email address being associated with it. But because it's not your account, you are not responsible for anything arising from his use of your email, and any negative consequences of not keeping the email address up to date fall on him, not you.

A third possibility is that you are actually at least partially responsible for the account, which seems to have been created years ago when you were living together. That is, it was and is his and your account, therefore you are authorized to access the account and change the email address. I assume you didn't actually leave your name on the account, but you can clarify, if you did.

Answer 2

Sometimes, Emails sent to the wrong person can be really expensive for the one sending!

Let's assume it was a doctor and he sends Bob's results to Alice. He did violate HIPAA, which can be REALLY expensive, and Alice can report that to the local health authorities.

Let's assume it was a doctor and he sends Bob's confidential conversation to Alice... and he is in breach of the lawyer-client privilege, which might cost him his bar license!

And then there are consumer protection laws. Alice is in California, so CCPA applies to her. An Arkansas company that does no business in California has her information on file and sends her Bob's order forms and bills. Technically she could, under CCPA, demand the deletion. However, the company might claim a legitimate reason not to delete the data (they need to send the bill somewhere and Alice is not the actual person the account belongs to) and they might challenge that they are in Californian jurisdiction.

Arkansas law however might be more helpful: the Arkansas supreme court decided in Jegley v. Picado, 349 Ark. 600, 80 S.W.3d 332 (2002): "Arkansas has a rich and compelling tradition of protecting individual privacy and that a fundamental right to privacy is implicit in the Arkansas Constitution.". This does especially extend to financial data, which is protected under the Personal Information Protection Act/Arkansas Code Annotation §4-110-101 and the following. Under these paragraphs, disclosing "[a]ccount number, credit card number, or debit card number in combination with any required security code, access code, or password that would permit access to an individual’s financial account" is to be fined with up to 10000 $ per case. The company could possibly be violating those provisions, but they also might claim that Bob wants the bills to go there, so they don't give away information to a person that is not allowed to have them.

Final words

Privacy law is tricky, and retiring an e-mail account can be a huge hassle. Personally, I would put the company on the Blacklist (mark as spam/Junk-mail) and change the account password, allowing me to keep the mail-account and not receive the e-mails and at the same time denying him access - nobody has a legitimate business to access my private e-mails but me (or whoever will have to deal with my digital inheritance). The e-mails will end in nirvana, never to be seen again.

You are under no obligation to receive or reroute the emails to the correct recipient, or give him access to your account. In fact, he is under obligations to his electric company to provide a valid billing address.