[Guvante]

Are they actually legal?

Generally those kind of scams setup an illegitimate transaction that would be reversed in a court case.

Whether they rise to a criminal matter is complicated but the vast majority of such scams hold up to scrutiny and instead rely on shell games to make retrieving your funds to expensive to be possible.

[LocalH]

Legality is a matter of enforcement, not of legislation

[inigyou]

Germany follows the law extremely strictly, even more than the USA. If there's no law that says they can't do this, they can do it. Common sense rarely enters the picture in German legal battles

[Guvante]

In the US these kinds of scam fail to be legal on the basis of contract law which is way more nuanced than "can't do this"...

I am not talking about common sense I am talking about things like informed consent and consideration.

[inigyou]

German law doesn't really care if your consent to a contract was informed or not. If you technically consented, then you consented. This is also how we got the recent thread about .at domains renewing automatically and the registry suing you if you don't pay.

[Guvante]

That can happen in the US too... When you agree to a contract you are bound to the terms of it.

Why do you think it is so common to hear horror stories about gym memberships?

But in your example no one agreed to the contract which means no agreement exists.

Generally you can say that payment was agreement to terms but that doesn't work if you deceived to get the payment.

[inigyou]

> in your example no one agreed to the contract which means no agreement exists.

??? you agreed to it by registering a .at domain. There was probably some fine print at your registrar which says you agree with the registry policies

[Guvante]

My bad I meant original example. I agree the "you agreed to auto renewal" silliness happens everywhere.

Likely the difference is court costs.