Rocky Mountain Bank in Wyoming is suing Google for not wanting to disclose the identity of one Gmail user who accidentally received an email erroneously sent out by the bank’s employee. The email has an attachment containing confidential information of around 1,325 individual and business customers of the bank including names, addresses, tax identification and social security numbers.The bank employee who committed the mistake tried to recall to email but of course it was a futile attempt since the email was already sent. So the employee sent another email, this time really meant for the Gmail user asking him or her to delete the email without reading it. But up until now, there was no reply from the Gmail user.
The Bank then decided to sue Google and demanded that the identity of the Gmail user be disclosed to them. But of course Google refused to take action without a court order and even so representatives from Google said that even with a proper court order, they will still not give the information to the Bank unless they got a permission from the Gmail user.
The issue is still hanging in the balance. And the Bank fearing that the buzz would spread to their other customers and create panic, asked the court to seal the case pending court orders that will force Google to disclose the information. But the court denied the Bank’s motion.
Will the court imposed its legal authority and force Google to breach its Gmail TOS and disclose the user’s information? I don’t think so because that will result in another case that can be filed by the Gmail user.
Maybe what the Bank should do now is hope that the Gmail user would not take advantage of the information that was accidentally sent to him.
You have to wonder why Rocky Mountain Bank was sending out that type of info via email in the first place!
My thoughts exactly!
It seems that so many people feel that email is secure.
It certainly is not!
Maybe people will finally get the message now, as solid proof, that email is not secure at all.
I’ve had some pretty important email come to me that should not have. Yes I did destroy it and notified the party that sent it mistakenly.
When did we as a society stop taking responsibility for our own stupidity? Of the 3 entities directly involved here, I’d say the bank was the only one who screwed up.
Rocky Mountain Bank, suck it up, cross your fingers, and pray that nothing worse comes of this. Be accountable.
Rocky Mountain back should have encrypted the attachment and would not be so worried. The back should be worried about causing a panic. If I found out my bank was email sensitive information willy nilly, I would cause a big stink..
I just got this big email with thousands of bank accounts. Don’t know why though.
Wow! I didn’t look around to find out any facts about this scary event but I certainly have seen and experienced things like this happening myself. To be able to retract information sent out is important and a tool does exist called “Touch Filer”. Banks and other companies should not use email to send out confidential information, rather, they should implement tools like Touch Filer
I’ve heard of what Bruno is talking about !!!??? It allows you to print to it information that is only viewable by the intended party. It does this by implementing sanity checks along the way before it actually makes it available for on-line viewing. When Touch Filer does use email it only sends a notification out to the intended party in the form of a link, then it requires not only a user ID and Password, but, it also has the option to make the viewer use a Multi-Factor Authentication Key. See: http://www.SoIntuitive.com Touch Filer