dweezil22

To save anyone a google, here's a summary: http://splitsider.com/2015/11/that-time-gallagher-displayed-his-true-awfulness-and-then-stormed-out-on-marc-maron/

Pretty good buffet I used to go to had a two prong approach for surviving all you can eat sushi:

1) Pack it on enormous rice buns

2) Have a "you didn't eat all your food" surcharge (which they only seemed to care about enforcing for people making DIY sashimi)

Were you at all concerned about possible legal ramifications for yourself? As a programmer in the US, I would never write such (an awesome and useful) tool, as our incredibly loosely worded laws would surely leave me open to prosecution should some idiot law enforcement agency decide they wanted to mess with me.

Good for you. I think you're likely to be fine given that:

1) You're in Italy, not the US. If someone is going to get pissed off, it will likely be in the US and international borders alone should filter out most ridiculous accusations (which all would be)

2) You've had major media coverage. It's hard to mischaracterize your site as malicious hacking when a google on it will quickly bring up news articles talking about how helpful it is.

Hopefully this sort of discussion will get better coverage though, as right now in the US even simple research via URL hacking (like incrementing a customer ID in a URL to see if it's wide open) is potentially a federal crime (and so is ripping a DVD that you bought).

Sounds like you already got good advice about the debt collector, but you should also file a complaint with the appropriate insurance company ABOUT the doctor. I'm just a random customer that's had my share of insurance screw-ups, so perhaps an expert will correct me, but my understanding is that in-network providers sign agreements with insurance companies that promise to follow basic steps for submitting claims for customers in a timely and accurate manner.

If they fail to abide by those terms, the insurance company can kick them out of the network. As a customer this sets you up with various protections as well, for example, I discovered a Blue Cross policy I had a few years ago has a time limit on filing claims and billing customers, so if a doc completely screws up and doesn't file for 180 days, they're out of luck and their provider agreement says they can't bill insurance OR the customer anymore.