Correspondence with Wells Fargo

OIG Hotline, Wells Fargo Bank has recently informed me that the Bank has prepared a response to my Data Deletion Request.  In this email, the Bank has instructed me to go the Wells Fargo Privacy Center and sign on in order to view that response.

If I sign on within the Wells Fargo Privacy Center, however, I must agree in advance to Wells Fargo's statement that it may elect to retain my personal data even in the event of my data deletion request.

"By clicking Continue blow, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree with how the Privacy Center words as described in the Important Information PDF."

But here is the Important Information:

The second clause within Wells Fargo's Important Information is remarkable:  We may decline to honor a deletion request and instead retain personal data as required or permitted by law.

The operative question here is whose law?  The FBI's laws?  Christopher Wray's laws?

I have never before encountered a Privacy Center site that states the company involved may elect to decline to honor a deletion request and instead retain personal data.

I do not believe that Wells Fargo's practices in this regard comport with the California Privacy Act, and I doubt they meet the standards of federal privacy regulations, either.

As a result, I have chosen not to sign on to any Wells Fargo site that stands as a gateway to Wells Fargo communications.  Rather, I have requested in the email below that Wells Fargo provide me with hard copies of its communications via USPS mail on an immediate basis.

In addition to the violations of the California Privacy Act, above, Wells Fargo has announced that all customers who continue to use online banking after May 24, 2023 must accept the Bank's new Online Access Privacy Policy, in which customers must relinquish further privacy rights.

I suspect this company of acting in bad faith in this instance.  Due to Wells Fargo's signatory status with Infragard, the Bank's failure to safeguard customers' privacy should be evaluated.

It may be appropriate to ask whether a consumer bank should ever agree to serve as a repository of defamatory information supplied by corrupt far right factions of the FBI concerning a law-abiding customer.

I think that very idea offends a reasonable person's sense of justice.

It should offend Wells Fargo's executive management team's sense of ethics as well.

In the absence of that, I will be taking my banking elsewhere.

Most sincerely,

Lane MacWilliams

************************************************************************************

Email to : WFExecutiveOffice@wellsfargo.com. From: lanemacwilliams@gmail.com. Date: April 28, 2023 at 11:48 PM

Dear Brittany:

This is to request that Wells Fargo immediately mail to my home address its response to my concerns regarding Case Number 06202304181179080 as well as its response to my Date Deletion Request as described below:

Reference Number:  2000121436635

Request for: LANE MACWILLIAMS

Request to:  Delete Data

Request made on: 04/17/2023

The correct mailing address is 45 Vista Verde Way, Portola Valley, CA. 94028.

Thank you for your immediate follow up.

If Wells Fargo is unable to meet my privacy and security requirements as a law-abiding customer, I need to have access to that information right away,

Thank you for your engagement with this matter,

Lane MacWilliams

*************************************************************************************