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Even though the SIM was part of the car they bought, the SIM's contract is not in their name which means using the contract would be theft.

• Arainach 2y ago
  Is there case law on this? I don't see any way in which this is legally theft by the OP (admittedly my knowledge is more US-centric than Euro-centric). If I let someone tether a device to my cell phone (or loan my phone to them), are they committing theft? The company on the contract voluntarily gave the SIM to OP.
  • taeric 2y ago
    Imagine it was a credit card found in the car, what are the material differences? Note the suggestion is to willfully use the device in a way.
    • JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
      Well, one is tied to a private bank account, the other is a privacy-violation device tied to no one.
  • staticautomatic 2y ago
    IAALBNYL it’s not theft because they’ve been abandoned and are in the new owner’s possession. If the prior owner can’t be reached and the security company which claims to own them won’t take them, they’re probably fair game.
    • 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
      I do not see any way in which this property could still be considered the previous owners. Let's say the camera was in the bathroom pointed directly at the shower. You just have to suck it up forever, knowing that someone could be watching? In fact, I could imagine it being a criminal charge for trying to capture people in the nude. What if someone has a child who bathes there? Now they were trying to create CP.
      • fwip 2y ago
        Even if that were the law, you could disconnect the cameras or cover the lens.
        • 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
          What if it has microphones which are not so obviously obscured? I do not see why it should depend upon my technical acumen to non-destructively disable a surveillance device within my private space.
      • staticautomatic 2y ago
        It’s property law 101 that possession and ownership are not the same thing.
  • cyberpunk 2y ago
    You better believe if I buy a property in Germany which has security cameras inside the absolute first thing that’s happening is those are getting smashed to absolute bits and if anyone even tries to complain I’ll sue them. I may even consider filing against the previous tenants for not removing them and so my being filmed destroying them was without my consent, it’s a clear crime to me to record someone on their private property without their permission .. This is absolutely not normal anywhere.
    • JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
      Same thing in France and I don't understand some answers in this thread. My home -> my cameras, and you can be sure they will be removed and thrown away ASAP. It's at least a violation of my privacy and wouldn't be tolerated where I live.
• Xenoamorphous 2y ago
  This can be difficult to grasp. I bought an aparment 3.5 years ago and it had an alarm installed. I called the security company to transfer ownership but that couldn’t be done without authorisation from the previous owner, which probably makes sense. The problem is, they were unreachable, and I was living on a house that I now owned, and which had cameras the previous owner could take pics from at any time. My patience was running out so I threatened the security company with removing the cameras installed in the house I owned, but I was told that they owned them even if they were inside my house.
  • hedora 2y ago
    At that point, you could point out that you have no contract with them, and that they’ve abandoned their property on your place. The last time I checked, US property rights made it clear that you cannot just store stuff on other people’s land without permission, and then complain when they throw it away. They could try to argue that whatever contract the previous owner signed still applies, but for that to be the case, they would have had to amend the deed to the property, and that should have been noticed by your title agency.
    • Xenoamorphous 2y ago
      FWIW this was not in the US.
      • jhugo 2y ago
        Regardless I would have carefully taken these down and put them in a box on the day I moved in. And then called them (or better, written to them) and given them a reasonable amount of time (maybe a couple months) to collect their property, making it clear that I would dispose of it after that time expired.
        • sidewndr46 2y ago
          Why? After cutting the power to them I'd tell the company if they wanted them back I can take them down and ship them back at my standard rate of $500/hr
• cosmotic 2y ago
  The contract would likely say something to the effect of "I promise to pay for the data sent to or from this device" and nothing about the owner of the device. If anything was said about the owner, it would be that the responsibility of the original contract holder is to ensure the contract was terminated when the sale took place.