Reddit sent me invitations to their IPO to my "deleted" accounts! That's a GDPR violation!

ChrislyBear@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.ml – 1095 points –

Any pointers on how to report them?

As requested, I'm posting the full text of the email into this post body. I hope it's screen reader friendly:

u/USERNAME,

tl;dr – you’re invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. Details about eligibility and next steps follow. This (long, dense) email has all the info we can provide due to legal restrictions.

As you may have heard, Reddit has taken steps toward becoming a publicly traded company with the initial public filing of our registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2024. Yes, it’s happening.

And because you have helped make Reddit what it is today, you now have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors.

We’re offering a Directed Share Program (“DSP”) that invites eligible users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to participate in our initial public offering (“IPO”). (Including you!) Program Requirements While being selected to pre-register is the first step, there are certain legal and regulatory requirements to participate in the DSP that are outside of Reddit’s control. Bear with us here…

To be eligible for the DSP, you must: • Be a current U.S. resident; o You will be asked to provide the DSP Administrator a valid social security or permanent resident number, along with other personal information. Reddit will not have access to this data. o Please note that U.S. residents using a VPN may face application limitations if the VPN locates them in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions. • Be at least 18 years old; • Provide your full legal name and an email address; • Not be a current or former Reddit employee (FTE). When the DSP launches (a few weeks after pre-registration ends), individuals who have been confirmed for the program will be contacted by our external DSP Administrator. You will then be asked to provide additional information securely to the DSP Administrator to confirm your eligibility. How to pre-register The number of people who can participate in the DSP is limited; we will offer this opportunity to as many redditors as we are able to accommodate. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. Based on demand, we may also limit the number of shares available.

If you are interested in being part of Reddit’s DSP, please go to https://reddit.com/dsp on desktop to complete the pre-registration form. If you are one of the confirmed participants, we will follow up with an email with more details in the coming weeks. You can also refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for more information. Due to regulatory restrictions (yeah… we know…) we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions.

Pre-registering does not guarantee that you will be invited or able to participate in the DSP; it also does not obligate you to purchase shares.

As with any investment opportunity, you should make an individual decision based on your own personal circumstances and risk tolerance. Therefore, we urge you to review the preliminary prospectus, when available, before deciding whether to invest in Reddit.

The deadline for pre-registering for the DSP is March 5, 2024. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. What happens next? While there won’t be a confirmation email immediately after you pre-register, everyone who pre-registers will receive an email in the coming weeks from “noreply@redditmail.com”, telling them whether they can proceed with the next steps for the DSP.

This is an automated message (beep, boop, beep) and does not receive replies. Please refer to the FAQ for more information. Per our lawyercats, we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions. Prospectus and Important Disclosures The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, a copy of the preliminary prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, New York, New York 10014, or email: prospectus@morganstanley.com; Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316, or email: prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Attention:c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, telephone: 1-866-803-9204, or email: prospectus-eq_fi@jpmorgan.com; and BofA Securities, Inc., NC1-022-02-25, 201 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina 28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department, telephone: 1-800-294-1322, or email: dg.prospectus_requests@bofa.com.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This notification shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time prior to the notice of its acceptance given after the effective date. An indication of interest in response to this notification will involve no obligation or commitment of any kind.

You are receiving this email because a Reddit account, USERNAME, is registered to this email address. 548 Market St., #16093, San Francisco, CA 94104–5401

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Excuse my ignorance but how is this a violation?

GDPR requires deleting data if you ask them to delete data. How did they get your email address if they supposedly deleted your information?

Is deleting an account the same as asking them to delete it though?

Gdpr also requires data only to be kept no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. Deleting your account, even it isn't a request to delete your data removes any purpose for keeping it.

That’s more for people booking flights and what not. With an account, they need a way to contact you if you’ve done something illegal, among a host of other things. It’s not the same scenario.

Until you specifically request it, it’s not gonna happen, and even then, they still need something to keep to trace back to you for legal reasons.

GDPR also requieres that you use the data for the appropiate cause that the user opted in to. So if they have the data for legal stuff this would still be a violation.

How so? The person never requested it to be deleted for that, you consented to all of this when you made your account and linked it to an email.

Article 6 states that there are only 6 reasons why you can process data the one applying here is a

If the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data;

Informed consent has to be given freely and for each purpose individually each consent option one has to consent to has to be opt in and has to be singular not bundeled.reddit doesnt do that therfore their only right is to use the mail as part of the service. With the deletion of this account they are not further allowed to use this mail for anything else except legal.

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Let’s assume that the dude requested for a deletion of his account (specifically - not all his data) of the basis of gdpr and the execution of his data subject rights; that doesn’t exclude the possibility for reddit to keep his contact details for specific purposes based on the legitimate interest of reddit. Or at least they could play with the argument.

They can keep it but they are not allowed to use it as of article 5&6.

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