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

Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank

from the no-bankrate.se? dept

It's quite common for regulators around the world to insist that no company can call itself a "bank" unless it's an official, regulated bank. In fact, that's often why you see companies (including holding companies of real banks) that use the word "banc" instead of "bank." It's to get around such regulations. However, it looks like regulators in Sweden have gone a step further, telling the Swedish domain registrar, that it can't even allow any domain name to be sold with "bank" in it, unless it's sold to an official bank (found via Michael Scott). Of course, the whole thing seems ridiculous. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why a site might want to use the word "bank" in a domain name without being a bank themselves. A domain could be a site about banks, a service site like Bankrate or simply contain a surname like Banks -- which shouldn't confuse too many folks.

Filed Under: bank, domain names, sweden

Scammers Siphon Money From President Sarkozy's Online Bank Account; Gov't Blames Itself

from the misplaced-blame? dept

There are a bunch of news stories showing up about how some scammers apparently were skimming some money from the online bank account of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. According to the report, the scammers probably only had account numbers and login info, and they didn't even realize from whom they were stealing. That said, what's more interesting is the government's response to the theft. Rather than suggesting banks should improve their security, the secretary of state for consumer affairs notes that an investigation is under way to see how the government can improve the security of the banking system. While it does seem quite rare for a government to take responsibility for problems, in this case, it seems a bit misplaced. It's not clear what role the government had in this scam whatsoever.

Filed Under: bank, blame, nicholas sarkozy, online banking, theft

Senate Wants To Exempt Banks From Patent Infringement Lawsuit

from the why-an-exception? dept

The Senate seems to be really into granting immunity these days. Most folks know about the decision to grant telcos immunity for possible violations of the law, but in a much less well publicized situation, the Senate has moved to grant banks immunity from an ongoing patent lawsuit (found via Against Monopoly). While I agree that the patent seems questionable, and the impact on banks would be burdensome, it's ridiculous that the Senate would carve out a special exemption for banks (and apparently, as it stands now, taxpayers would have to pay the patent holder instead -- though, the Senate is trying to change that). It's nice that Congress has noticed that the patent system is broken here, but rather than fixing the actual patent system, their response is just to exempt one class of companies from one particular lawsuit? As reader Rich (who also submitted this item) pointed out: "If this goes through, every big industry will just pay off/lobby their friendly neighborhood Congressman to exempt them from specific patents. Too bad Vonage didn't do this before being forced to pay millions for weak patents."

Filed Under: bank, exemption, patents, senate

Oops, Your Balance Is: ($211,010,028,257,303.00)

from the math-is-hard dept

A few years ago, an honest Virginia man reported a bank error that resulted in an extra $1.8 million dollars in his bank account -- not once, but three times. Where did all of that money come from? Perhaps they have now found the source. This week, a Georgia man was notified that he had a negative balance of $211 trillion at his Wachovia bank account. His debt makes the national debt, which is only slightly over $9 trillion, seem like small potatoes. Luckily for him, Wachovia reports that the balance was caused by an isolated banking error, and that he was not liable for any charges related to the negative balance. In this case, the error was that his account number was entered in place of his balance. Like the $218 trillion phone bill we saw in 2006, why are errors of this magnitude not caught by some sort of bounds checking algorithm in the bank's software? Furthermore, if an error this size gets through all of the checks and balances, then what other, less noticeable errors are falling through the cracks every day?

Filed Under: bank, error
Companies: wachovia