Square-Enix is (illegally) asking for my private identity document by email...? WTF

Question... it may be ilegeal but when you registered you had to accept the terms and conditions... amybe in them there was something about this...

group hug (\^__^/)

Laws are different in different countries, ILLEGAL means ILLEGAL, consumer protection laws are there to protect us and differ according to countries and merchants agree to each and every one of them when they agree to sell online/in another country/in EU...

In Croatia no one gets to ask you for your ID except the police and when buying age-restricted merchandise (cigarettes, alcohol).
I wouldn't send them my ID under any circumstances.
Just contact their customer service and ask them if they really sent that email and, if they did, warn them that they're violating your rights, as well as all other citizens' of EU when they send such a request.

EDIT: Edited because I used harsh language when first writing this because I was hungry and upset over some parts of this discussion. I ate an apple dipped in melted chocolate and sprinkled with almonds, hazelnuts and raisins and am now back to my usual self xD

I just want to agree that it's insane they ask for this. And I'm happy that laws in Europe are made to protect costumers a bit, because the rich companies can easily take care of themselves.

I don't even know what to say about this thread. I'm having trouble believing that a company asked for some kind of ID in this instance. There are verification procedures for various forms of payment that do not require that, but besides that, you'd have to be insane to provide any sort of personal ID document for an online purchase, unless it was something like providing a school ID so that you could get educational discounts on software. On top of that, the small cost of this SE bundle doesn't justify these kinds of security measures. Fraud prevention is usually triggered when making purchases of a much higher amount and/or there are purchase limits in place to prevent you from purchasing over a certain amount.

Nothing about this story makes sense.

Are you sure your computer hasn't been hacked? Is there some additional info you haven't told us, that might explain why such a thing might happen, like your card's billing address is in one country, but you're now living in some other country, or you're trying to purchase multiple bundles, or something unusual other than you wanted to buy one bundle, and they went crazy?

I know people who in cases like this send scanned, blurry (so completely unreadable) IDs.

It's illegal to ask for it, so if they really want to have something from online shops, they try to loophole it like this. Sometimes it works.

I never heard of square enix asking for ID, even when I wanted to get my account back, r u sure it was them? There r lots of sites that ask for your ID card thought

Out of curiosity and since you're really hammering the point home, that it's illegal in your country: Do you have a concrete article of a law which states that this is illegal or are you just talking based on your opinion? I would honestly be interested in the wording of such a law (I'm not a lawyer myself, but for my job I work a lot with statutory and contractual issues so I'm somewhat sensitive to this).

This sounds an awful lot like phishing, when someone poses as a trusted third party to try to convince others to turn over information that can be used in financial fraud/identity theft. Might want to try to confirm this is actually them. For instance, if the e-mail provides any links, mouse over them. Do they actually go to Square-Enix's website? If you've already confirmed all this, just ignore me.

Don't worry, I'll send Square Enix your private personal info for you.

View attached image.

Notabene
aka
konrads6, Attorney at Law

Well, this thread escalated quickly . But at least it was an interesting read :P

I mean, it's sketchy, and you're probably not legally obligated to do it, but that doesn't mean it's illegal to ask. Now, if they held the service (not a pending transaction, but a transaction for which you were charged without verification but delivery depends upon verification) it's not illegal, per se, especially if it's included in their ToS. It's legal for me to go and ask for people's credit card numbers. It's not ethically sound, usually, and there is no compulsion for someone to give it to me, but even though it would be a perceived breach of privacy since it's a question asked in the context of an interaction which does not violate the law there is no legal culpability there. On the other hand, if the issue is about sending the document by mail specifically, and there are laws against that, then yes, that is illegal, but the request for verification itself is not... technically. If it's illegal to mail the documents, it could be illegal because it's incitement to a crime, but I don't know all the legal contexts.

My main account at Square Enix is blocked for buying stuff. I can login and so on, but I can't buy anything. The support says my computer is blocked for security reasons, but thats not true. It even doesn't work at other computers with that account and it works with another account at the "blocked" computer. They have a strange security behavior. Support says, the cann't give me more information to hold the security of accounts secure.
Some facts are clearly not true the write in the support mail, but they are not willing to help or unblock, they prefer that a customer better not buy their products anymore.

I don't know why this happend, I bought years with the main account and since last December it's blocked for buying.
They never wanted personal documents from me.

One German company once asked me to do the same. I am not a stupid fool in order to scan my passport and send it by unsecured mail. So I simply said what they ask is absolutely unacceptable to me and asked for a refund. They sent a refund and the story finished. The fact is even if a reputable company starts asking for scans of your ID, in order to protect them from theft, they have completely flawed, if not even illegal policy and YOU SHOULD NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM . Period. I will never ever do business with a company, which is not happy with a classical credit check, based on checking with my credit card provider. My credit card provider knows everything about me, since I charge almost all my costs on this card and I've been paying my bills orderly for the last 15 years. So, I should have some credit for paying my bills and having a good credit rating and I DO NOT WISH TO BE TREATED AS A SCUM BY ANYONE ! This is what I wrote to this company's support (and, yes, they sell Steam games online) and they never bothered to answer - just sent me the refund. If Square Enix has this completely absurd policy of insulting their customers, I would be more than happy to stop buying from them ! Please report on what happened and spread the word about this

I came here to join the debate but I don't have enough motive to read through all that shitstorm. Take a look at Sweden's Personal Data Act. It is pretty much the foundation for most of the information privacy laws.

If this is is the most fucked up thing you've seen in your life, I can only compliment the quality of the cushions surrounding your existence.

You should call up your lawyer

Steam Valve asked me for mine once :x

This topic made me buy the bundle. When I signed in, I was reminded that I had previously registered with completely fake info (except email, obviously), processed the order anyway, Paypal mentioned it didn't match my registered info, went through anyway. shrug

I had Steam do that once to prove my country of residence.

Well. Let's just say this thread really is a good read - for two different reasons :P

View attached image.

OP is correct.
SQENIX just wanna make sure all 6 euro bundle buyer are actually from EU, which protects EU consumer for refunding after bundle is revealed. (US and other countries' consumer can't refund after bundle are revealed.)
But it IS illegal. I support OP!

Since you are suing them, alright let's see the results. Will you post what result you get?

Notabene you are right, a company you purchase games for has no legal grounds to ask you for your id. Did they perhaps think you were doing some other transaction with them? Like some work partnership of some sort? Because if you were only ordering a product from them. They do not need any personal documents from you past anything related to the payment. As for all the people flipping out and writing all these negative comments, Notabene knows his rights as a private individual, and that's great, everyone needs to know their rights. The thing about the police for example, even they cannot ask you for your id unless there is a suspicion of a crime, or wrong doing, or you are behind the wheel of a motorised vehicle and you were stopped by a traffic cop in which case if they think there's a violation they have the right to ask you for a licence etc. So, good on you Notabene, I suggest you keep up with your efforts to figure this out, and not give them any information they are not legally entitled to.