Posted: February 15, 2019

Third Party Services and Access to Case Information and Documents through CM/ECF

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has urged all courts to provide the following reminders to CM/ECF filers:

  • CM/ECF filers should protect their CM/ECF filing credentials and PACER account credentials. CM/ECF filers are discouraged from listing third-party service providers as their secondary Notices of Electronic Filing recipients.
  • Caution should be exercised when using third-party service providers and software to collect and organize case filings as doing so may result in granting inadvertent access to restricted documents. Third-party service providers may resell or publish documents they obtain using your credentials. You are urged to use caution in your computer security practices to ensure that sealed documents to which you have access are not disclosed.
  • Fee-exempt PACER users should not share any documents they obtain from PACER under their exemption as such exemption applies only for limited purposes and any transfer of data obtained as a result of a fee exemption is prohibited unless expressly authorized by the court.