Google Ordered To Shut Down Gmail Account Of User Who Received Unsolicited Banking Info
from the well-that-sucks dept
Yesterday, we wrote about Google being taken to court because Rocky Mountain Bank screwed up and sent confidential information to the wrong person's gmail account. It's still not clear why they were sending confidential info to anyone's gmail account, let alone to the wrong person's. The bank tried to contact the person at the email address, but had no luck. They asked Google about who it was, but Google refused without a court order. However, the court has gone even further, and ordered Google to deactivate the entire account. While you can absolutely understand why the bank wants the account shut down, to protect that info, it's quite troubling that someone's email account just gets deactivated, despite them doing absolutely nothing wrong. Especially in an era when people rely on their email accounts for all sorts of important things, having a judge deactivate the account of someone who did nothing wrong seems quite problematic. Yes, the bank screwed up. And yes, lots of information was potentially exposed, but that should be the bank's problem -- and not the email recipient's.
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Filed Under: confidential information, court order, deactivated, email
Companies: google, rocky mountain bank
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Regardless, this shouldn't be Google's problem, it shouldn't be the courts problem, and it shouldn't be the E - Mail recipients problem. But of course, in America if I make a mistake someone else has to pay. This is the kind of behavior our legal system encourages. This person had to pay with his/her Gmail account for the banks mistakes.
Now if someone doesn't like me all they have to do is send me someone else's personal info via a bank (ie: if they work at a bank) and then order a court to shut down my Gmail account. This can be used as a tool for malicious purposes or perhaps even extortion.
Or if the court does/did order personal information about the E - Mail recipient to be revealed, someone can make a phishing scam out of this in order to collect private information from people based on their E - Mail address.
Or if someone doesn't like me over the Internet based on something I said that disagrees with them and they only know me and my E - Mail address over the Internet they can use this as a tool for either malicious purposes or to collect information about me.
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Re:
Remember the backlash from Amazon's move? And you want Google to repeat it?!
The bank made a mistake, and they should acknowledge that and after that shut the F4 up.
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Yikes
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VRP
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spam
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Re: spam
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The gov't will just bail them out if that happens.
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Reimbursement
"the bank mistakenly sent names, addresses, social security numbers and loan information of more than 1,300 customers to a Gmail address"
I can't say that I've ever sent an email to the wrong person. Forgotten to attach something, yes, accidently mailed 1300 confidential pieces of info on an email, umm Not Even Close.
I really really want this to be a business email so that the bank is forced to reimburse the poor person who's email account gets randomly shut down. They should just out of principle, it might help lessen the blow.
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Re: Reimbursement
Anyway, someone should just send the bank some "sensitive" information and have them blown out of the Internet as well. Rocky Mountain Bank my foot!
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like for example...
2:00pm bank sent email to wrong email address
2:15pm bank contacted google
2:30pm bank gets courts involed
3:00pm bank tell google to deactivate the account NOW!
3:15pm google deactivates account....
anyone know?
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Aug 12-Last Week: Bank asks Google for user's info, Google says get a court order.
Last Week: Bank files with court.
Yesterday: Court order GMail account closed.
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my god
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re: my god
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My own GMail SPAM folder is loaded with emails allegedly from banks.
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And this solved what?
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If by some miracle the information was sent to my account, I can say with confidence that it will not be seen, if ever, for a very long time.
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What's extremely questionable is whether the court has the right to order Google to shut down the email account.
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Think about it this way. You get some random E-Mail from a bank called Rocky Mountain Bank. You make a random Test-cicles joke and delete it. Latter you get another one and delete it again without looking. Why would you look at an E-Mail from a bank you don't use? The next week you don't have an E-Mail account. You latter find out it's because a court ordered the entire account deleted because some fake sounding bank that you never worked with before send you over 1000 people's account info (and the bank isn't getting punished). That sound right to you?
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Re: rights
Someone spills some DDT in your yard and has your water legally permanently disconnected so it doesn't spread. Problem solved!
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DB Deluxe
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probably...
Someone calls into the bank and social engineers some poor customer service sap into emailing them something they shouldn't have. Bank figures it out, but caller already has the goods and is gone.
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Did google really deactivate the account?
-- Also someone should add Common Sense as a pre-requisite for being a Judge --
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Re: Did google really deactivate the account?
You ever hear of a lawyer with common sense?
Their law school would have beat it out of them
if they ascertained the student had any in the first place.
VRP
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The reality is, Rocky Mountain Bank is NOT doing the right thing because they should be proactively protecting the customers such that the contents of the email has no value and/or mitigate its value. Going after Google doesn't do anything to protect the customers. For all Rocky Mountain Bank knows, the addressee got the info, sold it to some Nigerian and its customers are getting screwed. Instead of spending $100K in lawyers to go after Google, it should be protecting the customers.. they can NEVER really know that it has been contained and they can NEVER provide it.. What Assholes.
I'd tell Judge James Ware to go screw himself and tell Rocky Mountain Bank to immediately mitigate the damages or face comtempt of Court.
The Bank's libility is open for class action, and in fact, I wish I was on the list to drive their lawyers and CEO nuts.
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I'd tell Judge James Ware to go screw himself and tell Rocky Mountain Bank to immediately mitigate the damages or face comtempt of Court.
Contempt of Court is exactly what you would probably charged with yourself.
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Still No Reason
Umm, no, I can't. The info could be removed from the account without shutting the whole thing down.
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Re: Still No Reason
But obviously the name of the game in THAT court
is to punish the actual addressee for receiving mail
that was addressed to him/her. (Isn't that a crime, yet?)
And let the petitioner (plaintiff) have the honors...
V
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Re: Re: Still No Reason
If the mail had already been deleted, then what good would shutting down the account do? Go ahead, tell me how that makes sense to you.
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The judge must have been a luddie
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email deleted?
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Not the end
It'd be even funnier if the spam filters got it.
Of course, that information is not only still on Google's servers, but it's now in Google's indexers. Regardless of if the user can get to it.
Maybe the reason the account holder couldn't be reached is that they are using it as a forwarding address, in which case, the email is now somewhere else. For instance, I have many gmail accounts I use IMAP to access. So the mail would already be on my clients.
Methinks the cat is long out of the bag.
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So many idiots, so little sence
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Other side?
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Re: Other side?
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Perhaps some time in the future when these big IT companies manage to push their cloud BS into our homes proper, they'll be able to zap our whole hard-drives just like they did with that email account.
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Strange world.
Google's reaction is ok to, they did it by the book.
What I think it should happen now is the poor SOB should go and sue Google for damages for having his life disrupted and then Google sue the banks to get those damages back.
And if you people don't do it already please remember:
- Use more then one account and use software to mirror the contents of those accounts.
- Those accounts have no cryptography and are open to the world, if you really want privacy and some degree of security start encrypting your channels now there are many, many ways to do it.
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Rocky Mountain Bank is one of the next banks that go out of buisness.
Google should have NEVER agreed to throw thier own customer under the bus for this twisted bank!
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They obviously lack standards for security (what employee would email sensitive info like that outside the company?) and don't really understand how email even works.
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Quite Problematic?
In a country where people can be imprisoned and held for years without charges ever even being filed, this is nothing.
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Contact the Bank
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Troubling!
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Judge Ware
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August 12 bank emails confidential information
August 13 bank attempts to contact email account holder. No response; banks determines that it is a valid account
September 1st, Federal Reserve tells them they need to take steps to freeze and/or determine status of the account
September 17th Bank files complaint
September 22 Bank files for TRO against Google
Yesterday the order comes down.
So. It's a temporary restraining order. Meaning temporary.
The person was asked about what happened to the information, and didn't answer. Some of you may think that you have the right to not answer legitimate questions and not have somebody draw conclusions about your behavior, but that's not this country-nor any country on earth. Sure, it may be entirely innocent-in fact, the most likely explanation is that the gmail account is valid, but inactive, in which case this order is almost a nullity and nothing to be calling a judge a jackass over.
Before people get their knickers all in a twist, imagine if somebody accidentally mailed confidential information to you to your house and when they came to ask you what you did with, you refused to answer? What do you think would happen then?
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Absurd
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Re: Absurd
Only in this case, no one even knows if the horses have left he barn, or even if the door is open in the first place. You seem to be taking the position that it's wrong for the Judge to order Google to close the door and find out if the horses are missing.
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So one wonders...
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More banking incompetence...
As for the mis-sent email - I don't see any problem. After all how could Bernie Madoff make any possible use of the information from behind bars?
But seriously, why don't the bank do what banks do best... offer a large sum of money as a reward?
Oh, never mind I just remembered - the guy that got the email isn't a CEO ;)
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Never piss off the man who have the stuff you want
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Rocky Mountain Bank is wrong
I sincerely hope that Rocky Mountain Bank customers have heard about this story and hope that they close their accounts at Rocky Mountain Bank PRONTO and find another bank to do business at. Rocky Mountain Bank needs to take responsibility of their own f**k up instead of blaming someone else or trying to pretend that a criminal phantom exists when it doesn't.
Just who the hell does Rocky Mountain Bank think they are to take away someone's right to have an email account? Corporations like them seriously disgust me. I hope that whoever the person is that had their email account taken away, I hope that person sues the living sh** out of Rocky Mountain Bank AND Google.
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Re: Rocky Mountain Bank is wrong
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Who will be the next?
This judge is a complete internet ignorant. An email is like a house number, y can´t lose it, can?
So disgusting... :P
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gmail
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gmail is crazy
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Re: gmail is crazy
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Unbelievable
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GMAIL
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close my gmail account
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