Google, Rocky Mountain Bank Ask Judge To Restore Deactivated Gmail Account

from the bring-'er-back dept

Last week, we noted that a court had ordered Google to shut down a Gmail account of a user who had accidentally been emailed confidential information by Rocky Mountain Bank. The two companies have now both asked the judge to reinstate the Gmail account, saying that the original request is now "moot." The article notes that the judge has adjourned the case until next week, so the account will remain deactivated until then. Still, it's not at all clear why the issue is now "moot." Did Google delete the email in question? Was it determined that the account itself was dormant? It would seem like these details are relevant, and not anything that would need to be hidden.

Filed Under: confidential information, court order, deactivated, email
Companies: google, rocky mountain bank

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.

Filed Under: confidential information, court order, deactivated, email
Companies: google, rocky mountain bank

Bank Sends Confidential Email To Wrong Address, Hauls Google To Court To Figure Out Who Got The Email

from the grab-some-popcorn dept

Everyone does it at some point: you send an email to the wrong person. Hopefully the content isn't that bad or important -- but it happens. However, when a Wyoming bank, Rocky Mountain Bank, accidentally sent confidential and sensitive information to the wrong Gmail account, the bank ended up taking Google to court to find out the identity of the individual. The bank had tried emailing the wrong address again, but got no response. Google, naturally, refused to just give up the name of the person without a court order -- so the bank went to court. It also tried to have the case sealed, but the judge has rejected that idea. You can certainly understand the bank's concern here, but it does seem a bit silly to have to bring someone else to court after you screwed up and sent the wrong email.

Filed Under: bank, email, identity, privacy, security
Companies: google, rocky mountain bank

In Case You Didn't Know... People Hack Email Accounts All The Time

from the public-service-announcements dept

Almost exactly a decade ago, we wrote about how it was quite easy for people to get passwords from AOL users. Somehow, somewhere, for many years, that post was one of the top results for people searching on "steal AOL passwords," meaning that (to this date) it's been one of our most commented on posts, with tons of clueless individuals asking in the comments how to steal someone's password. So, it wasn't much of a surprise to me to find out that there are a bunch of services out there doing a brisk business in selling the ability to hack email accounts for about $100 per account (cheaper in some cases), and there really isn't that much to be done about it. It's not a big enough problem for authorities to really care about. Even if they did crack down, it wouldn't stop the activity at all -- others would quickly pop up offering the same thing. Still, it's fascinating to see how blatant some of the services are in advertising their wares. You would think that they'd try to be at least a little subtle. However, I guess with so little likelihood of getting in trouble for it, those offering such services don't see any advantage in not being upfront.

Filed Under: email, hack

Will France's Three Strikes Law Also Allow Gov't Email Surveillance?

from the that-doesn't-seem-good dept

With the effort underway to have Sarkozy's new "three strikes" law approved in France, much of the focus has been on the slightly ridiculous five minute rule it gives to judges reviewing charges of copyright infringement online. An anonymous reader points us to a much more worrisome issue: that the law appears to sneak in provisions that allow for email surveillance by the government. The Senator pushing the law seems to see no problem at all with this, suggesting that it's fine to read through the emails of anyone "stealing intellectual property." Privacy rights apparently mean little to some in France.

Filed Under: email, france, surveillance, three strikes

Mary Kay Sues Yahoo For Inserting Ad Links In Emails

from the trademark-fun dept

We've seen way too many lawsuits involving companies suing search engines for trademark infringement due to paid search adveritisng, but the latest lawsuit is a bit different. It appears that Mary Kay (who has a long history of being an aggressive enforcer of trademark) has sued Yahoo because of the way it inserts ads in email. Apparently Yahoo employs that incredibly annoying process of hotlinking certain text words to pop up advertisements. I've seen this on various websites (now blocked thanks to No Script) but I didn't realize Yahoo used the same annoying process in email as well. Mary Kay claims that this is confusing, and this actually does raise some interesting legal questions. First of all, I could see how some people might actually be confused by these sorts of ad links. While they usually look a little different than a real hyperlink, unless you're paying attention, you might get confused and think it's a normal link, rather than an ad. But that just speaks to confusion over what the link is. Once you hover over it, it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that it's an ad. I have a lot more trouble believing that it would then confuse many users. That said, even if it is confusing, there's a question as to whether or not Yahoo should actually be liable for any confusion. After all, it's just using an automated system to insert these ads. I might argue that it's obnoxious, annoying and unnecessarily intrusive, but it's not clear that it should be illegal.

Filed Under: ads, email, links, trademark
Companies: mary kay, yahoo

Can Email Patterns Predict When Companies Are In Trouble?

from the neat dept

Here's an interesting study. Apparently, looking at the email patterns (not the content) of organizations may enable one to "predict impending doom." The researchers looked at Enron emails, and found that about a month before everything went bad, there was a sudden and rapid increase in the number of "active email cliques, defined as groups in which every member has had direct email contact with every other member." The number of such groups increased by a factor of eight. Not surprisingly, the messages between these cliques increased in frequency as well, and those message were rarely shared with people outside the clique. In other words, a bunch of rapid task groups came together about a month before everything got screwed up.

Of course, the data is only on one particular company, and there's nothing to indicate whether this pattern is really that common elsewhere. It wouldn't surprise me, but it would be nice if there were more data to back it up. Of course, that's difficult, because there aren't that many companies willing to share such data. Still, it's always neat to see attempts to pick out interesting predictive behavior from areas where you wouldn't necessarily expect it.

Filed Under: email, indicator, trouble
Companies: enron

Student Found Guilty Of 'Disturbing The Peace' For Sending Nasty Political Email To Professor

from the wow dept

As we all know, online debates can spiral out of control pretty quickly -- with name calling and people quickly jumping to extremes. This is especially true in the political arena, where various positions are stereotyped and extreme passions come out quickly. I tend to find such discussions tiresome. However, they occur all the time (occasionally here in our own comments). But could you consider such a conversation disturbing the peace? It appears that's exactly what happened to a student in Nebraska who had a rather nasty political email exchange with a professor.

The student and the professor exchanged a series of emails over a short period of time. The two were at opposite ends of the political spectrum (which side was which, honestly, doesn't and shouldn't matter), and the student used some nasty language and accused the professor of being a traitor among other things. To be honest, if you've spent any time in online political discussions, this really isn't particularly out of the ordinary -- and (somewhat amazingly) after a back-and-forth exchange where the professor asked the student to stop emailing him and noting how insulted he was by the emails, the student did send a long apologetic email, telling the professor he was sorry that he got so riled up, and he really liked the professor and just wanted to debate someone intelligent who viewed the world from a very different perspective.

A few months went by, and then the professor received two anonymous emails from a new Yahoo email address that used the professor's name as part of the address (the username was "averylovesalqueda"), again ranting politically against the professor. The professor found the emails threatening and turned them over to the police. The police eventually tracked the emails down to the same student who was then charged with disturbing the peace. Yes. Disturbing the peace. For sending a nasty email.

First Amendment scholars look out. Who knew that sending a private ranting email could disturb the peace?

Amazingly, a lower court and now the appeals court agreed and the student has been convicted of disturbing the peace for sending those emails. The court even claims that the email address itself is libelous which seems quite difficult to square with reality. No one would look at that email address and assume that it was actually from the professor in question, and there's no indication that anyone outside of the professor himself ever saw the email address in question. O'Toole, in his post, puts the blame not on the judges, but on the student, who chose to defend himself, and appears to have done a pretty poor job of it, now leaving this ruling to be used as a citation in other cases. This is bad news no matter how you look at it. Even granting O'Toole's premise that the student is at fault for defending himself (and doing such a poor job of it), it's still bothersome that a judge wouldn't take basic First Amendment rights into consideration here.

Filed Under: disturbing the peace, email, politics, rant

In Defense Of Mobile E-Mail 'Addiction'

from the Best-Use-Of-Your-Time dept

There is an interesting Reuters article about how former NY state Democratic Majority Leader Malcolm Smith had a meeting scheduled with billionaire Tom Golisano, a major political fund contributor. (Eschewing the issue of how political contributions are accepted without question, as paid access to our elected officials,) the article describes how Mr. Smith spent enough time on his Blackberry to offend Golisano. The billionaire has clout, and subsequently engineered the ouster of Smith. The article's true focus, then, is how dangerous it is for people to use their mobile email devices during meetings, during social engagements, in the car with family, etc. It points out how rude it can be, and also point out how it can actually be less efficient, because a person's attention is split.

That is all true, but whenever one of these opinion pieces comes out, it ignores the other case: that oftentimes at meetings, our attention simply isn't necessary or productive. In any given multi-person meeting, for what % of the time is each person's participation and attention truly productive? Is every topic related to you? Could a quick check of email be more productive? I would argue that optimal participation is usually less than 100%. Same goes for conferences: Sometimes the conference agenda will include a speaker that is just not very relevant to your individual interests. Yes, you could learn something by listening, but perhaps you could be more productive by responding to your clients, staff, or boss on your mobile device. I've met a few people who take offense at every sighting of a Blackberry, but that's usually attached to a big ego that takes offense too easily. Not every word you say is golden, or even directed at me. In a one on one meeting, obviously one should be focused on the person in front, and one should not feign listening while actually reading. But in multi-party meetings, there are good opportunities to mentally duck out. A blanket Blackberry backlash isn't well-reasoned. As in most debates, a balance needs to be struck.

Filed Under: attention, email, meetings, mobile email

Palin Email Hacker Says Emails Were Public Record... So No Crime?

from the legal-twists-and-turns dept

Last year, we noted two separate problems with trying to prosecute the guy accused of figuring out Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account password and posting it to the internet. First, the Justice Department has stood behind a position that opened emails are not private, based on a very literal reading of the law (you can check the link to understand the reasoning). Second, the law used to charge the guy specifically said that it was only a felony if it was used to further a criminal activity. That is, the hacking, by itself, wouldn't be seen as a crime unless it was a part of a larger criminal activity -- which it wasn't. Prosecutors changed the charges earlier this year to address that -- claiming that the criminal activity was a violation of Palin's privacy.

The accused guy, David Kernell, and his lawyers are trying a variety of different defenses (not surprisingly, of course), including claiming that Palin's privacy was not violated, because Palin's emails were a public record because (due to a separate lawsuit) a court had ruled that Palin was required to preserve her Yahoo account email. Because of this, the argument goes, the emails are part of the public record (which, given the first DOJ definition above, could fit under the DOJ's interpretation of the law). It's difficult to see this line of reasoning succeeding directly, as it seems to defy common sense, so it would be surprising if a judge bought into it.

Filed Under: david kernell, email, hacking, sarah palin