Slashdot Mirror
Bank Goofs, and Judge Orders Gmail Account Nuked
An anonymous reader writes "The Rocky Mountain Bank, based in Wyoming, accidentally sent confidential financial information to the wrong Gmail account. When Google refused to identify the innocent account owner's information, citing its privacy policy, the bank filed in Federal court to have the account deactivated and the user's information revealed. District Judge James Ware granted the bank's request, with the result that the user has had his email access cut off without any wrongdoing or knowledge of why." The Reg's earlier story says, "Rocky Mountain Bank had asked to court to keep its suit under seal, hoping to avoid panic among its customers and a 'surge of inquiry.' But obviously, this wasn't successful."
Quick! We need the normal lot of haters in here to spin this as Google being evil! Um... um... they... they host their services in a country that they very well know is subject to U.S. judges' decisions! Yeah! They should've known better! Obviously, Google is evil! TEH SIGNS ARE EVAREEWERE!
Why is the bank sending sensitive customer information to an email account hosted by a provider known for rifling though it's user's emails for information?
Also having a moment of gratitude that I don't use gmail.
Also wondering if I can send someone I don't like sensitive email, and then have a judge erase their email account erased.
San Francisco Photographers
...if a judge in, say, Korea granted the same request to have a gmail account blocked, an innocent user in, say, Germany would loose his email...even if that email contained confidental and critical information to be used by its owner...this is quite pathetic and something should be put in place to stop these low level distric judges making decisions that could affect users across the globe.
At least Google offers free POP and IMAP access, so it's trivial to back up your email locally. I'd still be pissed if something like this happened to me, but Google isn't to blame.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
If I get e-mails from banks that I have no relation with, it is usually spam and gets instantly deleted.
Perhaps that's why the recipient of the bank's private data didn't respond to any of their e-mails.
Also, why is a bank sending it's customers' private information over an unsecure connection (e-mail)? Wouldn't the bank be violating security rules even if the e-mail address was correct?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Wouldn't this be like having a package wrongly delivered to your house (through no fault of your own: the sender had the wrong address), and since it contained highly confidential information, a judge ordered your house to be burned to the ground? (Okay, that's a bit extreme, but you get my point.)
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
...wait. I mean, the account holder at this point has probably seen and done any damage that they are going to do with this information. How precisely is this going to help the bank's cause?
Of course, the account may be inactive and they may well have gotten to it before the person who owned it logged in again, but I do have to wonder why it is the recipient's problem that the bank sent this information. If the bank sent me that sort of information in the mail, does that mean that the county can order my house burned down to make sure I can't read that mail, even though I probably have already read it in full?
These decisions make no sense to me sometimes and it scares me because for some things I use only one email account and if my contacts disappeared, I might not be able to find some of these people again easily. I guess it's time to start backing up all my account data to my home machine by default.
This is yet another strike against "cloud computing" taking over. If they can order your account just plain zapped because a bank fucked up, I don't see how anyone's data is safe. At least if you had it stored at home or at work on your own machine, you'd at least know what the hell happened to it.
So why not post the judge's personal info: email, snail mail, phone, etc.?
I'd imagine that a few months of being throttled to unusable status may make that judge rethink the decision.
This decision was handed down by "Lying Judge" Ware. http://www.fa-ir.org/ai/judgeware.htm
Talk about lifetime appointment gone haywire.
Couldn't Google simply have deleted the single email. They would also have been able to tell if the user had read it or not, although what they would've done if it had been read, who knows - but it's not the user's fault.
The bank requested the user's identity. Google refused to provide it. So then the bank goes to court not only to get the user's identity but to deactivate the user's account. I'm missing the logic. Okay, maybe the bank fears that enough time has passed that the user has seen the errant email and wants to prevent the user from misusing the information. Now, that might work if the user does not have a local copy of the email. On the other hand, if the user has a local copy and is now angry at the bank for having had their gmail account shut down, the user, who might otherwise have done nothing, now has both the means and the motive to do something. Good move. Wouldn't it have been possible for Google to contact the gmail user and ask him to delete any local copies? And Google, presumably, could have deleted the email from its own servers. I like Google's policy of protecting user identities. But this whole mess sounds like two bureaucrats blindly following policy to the detriment of the end-users. Can't anyone think anymore?
linquendum tondere
Truly great logic at work here. We screwed up, so nuke the presumed innocent user. Hell, if I was that guy and had gotten the file off before they killed my e-mail access I think I'd offer it up to Wikileaks in return for their heavy-handed treatment of me.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You know, if only the bank has include some serious sounding lawyerly language like, "This electronic communication is intended for our customer only. Sever legal action will be taken against unauthorized persons who receive this message and do not delete it immediately." That would have been enough right? Now all these lawyers who inflicted 25 line long legal boilerplate on every mail from corporations are high fiving in glee, laughing at the futile attempt of Rocky Mountain Bank trying to close (other people's) barn door, after their horse is stolen.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Presumably they need the user's identity because after step 1: Deactivate account, they need to proceed with step 2: Deactivate user (in case he read the email, he has confidential info in his brain.)
Of course, if that user has communicated with anyone then they will need to be deactivated as well, and so on, and so on... All I know is in the future I'm autoforwarding all my emails from Rocky Mountain Bank to Rush Limbaugh! :)
Not from the United States and not too familiar with the U.S. Constitution, but wouldn't this be a blatant violation of the first amendment?
There is a clearly innocent party here who has had a primary communication medium forcibly disconnected. Not only can they not talk about this confidential material (which there may be an argument for preventing), but they can't talk to anyone about anything. That sounds like a massive violation of freedom of expression...
It's not the bank's confidential information that leaked. So you'd be punishing the other victims for the actions of the bank.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Hopefully the email recipient gets notice before they lose all of their email.
And more hopefully, they find the offending message and forward it to the judge that made this ruling with a note akin to "Thank you for punishing me for having an email address. Here is the poison message, please order your accounts deactivated as well."
Do people actually put their real names in those forms? Even if they did is John Smith from the United States really going to help you track the guy down.
I run my email on my own email server... In my house. What would they have done if they accidentally sent the email to me?
So if I lie to my bank and give them an email address of someone I don't like, say the president of the company my business competes with, I can then get his email shut down. I'll remember this.
So, last time I sent a wrong paper to bank I should have asked the judge to close the mail delivery to that bank - have to remember! It should be easy, not even have to ask the post office for owner of the address!
Now, the damage is already done! I wonder who and how covers it to the innocent party (parties?) My e-mail connection is worth a couple of millions, at least, even a short cut would cause huge (future) losses and of course, the trauma - a jury probably would understand that and award me those millions except how to sue a judge / justice system? I might then get the government (tax payer!) relief help (money!) to continue my business - so what I wasn't ready for recession, sorry, I mean for justice(?) - doesn't sound right, didn't have a backup plan for it?
There is today a real need for justice system which would understand technology, at least on basic level. And I wonder how the bank was even able to send to a person who they assumably don't know - if they know who was the receiver, what's the point? Total screwup! No excuses, sorry, there are any amount professional IT people who can make this type of mistakes very difficult, only intentional e-mails (or whatever) can be delivered and then it's another issue totally. Maybe the bank could take the cost of 10 of them out of the CEO salary, he/she wouldn't even realize so small sum!
Google was absolutely right and maybe, just to show how nice they are, they could fight this on behalf of the e-mail owner? Maybe it would even be a good idea, otherwise they may start getting these court orders more in future? If a judge can just order this kind of e-mail (or any!) closing and giving the customer names it definitely will change how the Internet ( or post office or just speaking aloud) works today.
a spammer asked Google to remove thousands of gmail accounts because they received by mail a viagra offer with the wrong price.
Google was right to defend its policy. I hope they appeal to the 9th circuit court.
The bank was clearly on the wrong side.
I can only wonder if this user suffered monetary damages due to his email being deactivated.
I hope this judge gets censured. This is clearly an abuse of power and an abuse of process.
Luckily, the user can sue the bank for abuse of process.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'm the vindicative sort, so if they cut me off like this I would post their "confidential information" as far and as wide as I could.
Yes, and then screw over those 1,300 people whose information you wrongly received. Congrats, you would have just became a criminal. I can only hope you would enjoy your stay in prison.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Shouldn't the question the judge would be asking himself be, wtf are a bank doing sending highly classified and sensitive information unencrypted, over frigging e-mail? Google and the customer should really be last in line, long after the excecs at the bank have had their bottoms spanked.
No wonder the bank system collapses every now and then.
HTTP/1.1 400
He marked the first E-mail as junk mail and the second one got sent to his spam box...
Or better yet he hasn't checked it in a while...
Yes, and then screw over those 1,300 people whose information you wrongly received. Congrats, you would have just became a criminal. I can only hope you would enjoy your stay in prison.
But isn't that just "Free Market" economics? By posting the information, he's doing *everyone* a favour by showing how insecure the bank is, thereby encouraging consumers to go elsewhere!
I think you mean:
"Could I interest you in ocean front property in Arizona ?"
or
"Would you like to donate money to save the rain forest in Antarctica?"
Basically it means, the person is gullible and you are going to try sell them something that doesn't exist, or you can't possibly sell. Since Florida has TONS of water, if you are selling waterfront property cheap enough. I would be interested.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Has anyone thought that maybe this is on of a shitload of dead gmail accounts? I know that I've got a few (dozen.) I would be nice if this is the case and the bank paid a bunch of lawyers just to have it shut down.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Those "other victims" as you call them chose to do business with Shitty Bank And Trust.
This is America. If they don't like how that choice turned out, they can vote with their feet. This decision by this judge only serves to preserve as many customers as possible for the bank, and dare I say that the bank does not have the right to have its customer-base preserved via the judicial system.
What I'm saying is that I dont care if it was 1 account, 50 accounts, or 1 million accounts. Shitty Bank And Trust does not deserve preservation here. They deserve to lose all the customers directly affected, plus other customers who go unaffected but or now severely concerned about their privacy.
"His name was James Damore."
Why is the bank using Gmail and not their own private email system? i mean this is a major security issue using the likes of gmail imo.
Yes, they did. And they also demanded that person contact them and tell them what action they took. That could come across as a threat ... or a scam. Both were likely just deleted. If the account actually does get shutdown (don't know if Google is going to appeal now or not), the bank needs to be sued ... and sued BIG! I'm sure quite many landsh^h^h^h^hwyers would love to handle the case. And in the mean time, people having accounts there need to be getting their money out fast.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If I see an unsolicited spreadsheet in my email, I assume it is a virus of some sort and delete it without opening it.
... that they didn't make another error and put an entirely different email address in their court documents? Banks ARE generally run very stupidly with regard to security. Rocky Mountain Bank is showing that they are the worst.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I found this article from very close to the bank's main office.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Who represented the rights of the user to the court?
Was a public defendant even involved, or was no one assigned because there was no face to the account that was deleted?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If POP/IMAP was enabled and local copy stored in user computer, give it as present to the mafia the moment the account is blocked.
Often times, I have received email with a footer that cites the information as confidential and stating that the recipient is required by law to delete it if it was sent in error.
and often times i see emails telling me that if i reply with my account details and send $1000 dollars to cover the cost of paperwork, then i'll have millions deposited in my account...
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
James Ware
The bank should have take the fall here. At this point if any of us get any information sent to any of our accounts they can close them down. Sure they may send an email requesting our cooperation but how can they trust us? From now on I sure won't trust them. I just hope that gmail user downloaded that file. If it was me and my account was closed like that I'd plaster those numbers all over the net. Some say that it would be a great inconvenience to the people whose information was sent to have to change their all the account numbers over, but how does destroying a gmail account ensure the data was destroyed and their accounts are safe? It doesn't. This is just a cover-up with the judge being to ignorant to realize how things really work.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
To this problem. Although it might not go over too well with the customers, either...
I'm not sure where anyone ever got the idea it was OK to put confidential information into an e-mail message, because it's simply not.
If that was my gmail account I'd be thoroughly fucked.
Most of the places I've registered, if I want to change the registered email address, I need to acknowledge it through my gmail account.
Now, my ISP doesn't offer an email option, so I can't just get one there. And if I'm going to move out of this area, I'd be screwed as well, as I'd have to get a new ISP and thus a new email-address. In the end the Gmail option is easier.
My gmail account is thus the primary account I have for all personal and semi-professional communications.
Since the bank went to court to get my account closed, they haven't broken any laws, so I'd be barking up a tree if I tried to sue for damages.
Google did exactly what they've promised to do - they refused to close the account without a court order.
And I can't exactly sue the court or the judge either.
Now, I do have the contacts saved elsewhere, but how do I easily prove that I am in fact the person behind my gmail account and get those companies to change the address they've saved, when I cannot send them a mail from that account to prove it? Paper work is a bitch.
And when one of my contacts suggests to one of their contacts that they could use me, then they're likely to use the gmail account which is now closed, which makes me look like an arrogant asshole: "He didn't even bother to write back to say no, he just ignored me."
If Google were kind, they would at least make mail to that account bounce with a good explanation like
...every few weeks. I have tried to contact the bank (Chase) to let them know that they're sending to the wrong account.
They make it fucking impossible to contact them - UNLESS I log on with the account to do so (or call them, which I don't feel like doing because I don't live in the USA).
Every couple weeks I reply to the email (even though it says "don't reply", it has a unique reply-to, so I hold out some hope that maybe someone keeps an eye on the occasional reply). This has been going on for months. Attempts to navigate the website to find a simple contact page appear to be futile - there /must/ be one (right?) but I can't find it at a glance, and how much time should I be investing in this, seriously?!
I haven't looked at the emails closely because I don't care what's in them, but I'm sure there's some personal/confidential information in them - and if not, as the owner of the email address, I'm sure I could request some more stuff to get sent to me.
I really want to fix this problem, rather than just hit 'spam' so gmail bins them all (which helps noone, I feel). But the bank has not taken this scenario into account adequately enough - and until they are forced to, they just won't bother.
(Why do banks send emails at all? They should /only/ ever send emails to people that have opted in with a public key so they can be securely signed. Yes, that cuts out a lot of people, but seriously, the people that it cuts out will be better off for it.)
Would federal officers shut down a bank's internet connection if someone accidentally sent them something illegal, say, terrorist training manuals, or (everyone's favorite...) child porn?
There's a small part of me hoping the GMail account belongs to an IRS auditor a few million short of his quota...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
There is a debate between economists on whether inflation should just include the price of products excluding food and energy or should it include housing and health insurance. Both housing and insurance have trippled since the late 1990's. Sure on paper it looks like you make the same but a $175,000 home in 1999 costs $350,000 even during the recession. Suddenly $55,000 a year is not worth jack in most metropolitan areas even if prices do not necessarily show it.
If you health care costs were put in the inflation equation with housing we would see a totally different side of economics that economists should have prevented if they only knew.
Something does need to be done.
http://saveie6.com/
Insurance is good for one thing - mitigating financial risk.
You can not ensure "health". Everyone dies sooner or later. If you have money, it will be later, on average.
If you don't have employer subsidized health care, there are very reasonable, low cost, high deductible health insurance policies that will protect you from a disastrous medical bill. It is irresponsible not to have such a policy, if you have anything at all to lose (like a house).
How we got to the notion that "health insurance" should cover every little thing is ridiculous. Think about how much your car insurance would cost if it covered oil changes and brake jobs, or how about if your home owners insurance covered painting, fence repair and replacing your carpet for normal wear and tear?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If the bank sent me such a document, and it was by paper mail instead of email, would the judge order my house burned down?
"Rocky Mountain Bank had asked to court to keep its suit under seal ...
What cause of action exactly allows you to sue someone else and seek relief (in a manner that injures the other party) for damages that you caused to yourself?
Even when I *ask* for them to email me confirmations, I get stuff like:
Dear Customer
Account Number XXXXXXXXXXXX1
We just did something at your direction.
If you didn't do it, figure out who we are can contact us immediately.
Read about our industry-leading Privacy Policy and our Security Guarantee online at our website.
Replies to this email end up in a black hole. If you need to reach us, use some other means.
Come on, you know who we are, you send us lots of your money, and we hope you keep on doing so, because we sure as hell don't pay you very much interest.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
They need the contact info so they can name him in the lawsuit in order to get their pet judge to sign the gag order, and fine him for the pain and suffering caused to their customers, by his e-mail address actually being a valid one.
Gag orders are tough when you don't know who you are trying to get silenced, and since you can't exactly gag people whose identity you don't know (no way to deliver service to them, when they ignore email).
That doesn't sidestep the fact that you would be causing a LOT more damage to the innocent people, who probably had NO idea their bank was capable of such idiocy, than the bank that actually screwed up. There are many ways of embarassing and humiliating them without destroying the financial futures of the innocent people who's privacy and security was blatantly disregarded.
How would you feel if your name was on that list of sensitive information and somebody posted it?
Since the bank couldn't seal the matter, is it possible another e-mail user could look up the e-mail address in question, sue Google over mails to "their friend" bouncing, and seek injunctive relief in the form of re-activating the recipient's account?
I (used to) routinely contract for WFB.
I can personally assure you on a first hand basis that WFB does not hire computer people based on sex appeal. If anything, there is a inverse correlation because most of those people are ugly enough to be R. Crumb drawings.
I didn't say they were any more competent (although there used to be some quite reasonable people at WFB).
Apologies to any of my former coworkers, but I defy you to provide a counter example.
Why doesn't Google just check to see if the read status of that sensitive e-mail letter is still "Unread" in that GMail account? And if it is, check to see if POP3/SMTP/IMAP is disabled. If it is enabled, then check to see if this message was downloaded by that GMail account owner. Wait, if the GMail account owner already downloaded the message through POP3/SMTP/IMAP, then why bother shutting down that person's GMail account? That's like the most childish thing I could imagine. Point being, if the e-mail was never downloaded or opened by the owner of that GMail account, then Google ought to outright delete that sensitive letter from that account and duke it out with the bank. (Google is invincible after all, right?)
It's pretty trivial to set up a filter in gmail to autodelete all email from rmbank.com, and it might be a good preventative measure in case they send any more "oops" emails.
Apparently the Judge was in his dorm room stoned when they discussed the fifth amendment.
I am "hurting" as much as everyone else in this current fiscal crisis, but I'm not going to take advantage of someone elses accidently-revealed information, as such..... What HAS our world come to?
you can't exactly gag people whose identity you don't know (no way to deliver service to them, when they ignore email).
Or when you've gotten their email account disabled.
What if the bank by mistake send this information via US Mail? Would the bank been able to go to the Postmaster General and ask that the person's physical mailbox be opened and any envelopes inside it be removed? How about forcing the person's mailing address be revoked or changed? Somehow I don't think a bank could make me change the numbers painted on the front of my house. (I hope not anyway.)
Why should email be any different then postal mail in this case?
As annoying and unfair it might seem to be to the email account holder, there ARE times when things like this are necessary. Note all the things that went right here though. Google wouldn't just up and hand it over without a court order. The judge wouldn't honor the request to keep the order sealed. And as unlikely as it seems, it's important to the customers of the bank to know to what extent their data has been compromised. If they can remove the document and determine that it had never been opened, the breech can be considered contained. If it WAS opened, although the account owner would hardly be considered responsible, the bank's customers need to know that there's a highly unlikely, but possible chance that their data is out in the wild and they need to perform whatever damage control is necessary. The account holder will also have opportunities to collect damages of his own due to the bank's actions. Had Google just complied without the court order, it would have been difficult to determine which party is responsible for the disconnection of the account. Now there's no question.
So, while the bank was able to temporarily have someone's email account disconnected, they did so at the cost of opening themselves up to a great deal of legal liability. Like it or not, this IS the way the system is supposed to work.
Play with my webcams and lights here
Can anyone understand what the bank is hoping for just deactivating that gmail account?
Is the bank really going to leave the leaked data unchanged rather than asking the customers to change details as far as possible?
Anyone else having problem with Gmail? I cannot log in...
Confidential information going over email is just plain retarded to begin with... its no wonder a company that stupid would do something this stupid, and then ask to government to also act stupid in correcting their stupidity. They can get sued for this, and then they can get sued for the info leak. If I invested at that bank I'd be getting my money out while its still there.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
The lesson I got from this is as follows: If one ever receives information which appears to be sensitive, the only way to make sure one won't get their account shut down by the incompetent to send it is to post this information somewhere public, therefore negating any need to shut down your account (the information is already leaked out).
Now, if the poor owner of the account in this case did in fact retrieve this information, he could still spread it around as widely as he can, so he can go to court and say "You honor, I understand my account was shut down in order to prevent this information leak. I really want access to my personal email so I the only way to get it back I could see was to eliminate the reason to keep my account shut down. It is now no longer necessary to keep my account suspended since the information is already all over the internet."
OK some bank is stupid and some judge screw up. But why did they shut down the account instead of deleting the message?
I don't understand on what grounds the disclosure?
so, if you get sent, let say a bank balacne statement from somone else and some bank you don't do business with, to your (snail) mail box and you just disregard it as spam and further more you disregard anything else from this bank as spam as well (remember you do not do business with them), then a judge can rule that the mailbox is removed and that the postman can not deliver ANY mail to your mailbox anymore... ever again?
sounds interesting, tell me more about this.
this would mean no bills, no unwanted solicitations, no subpoena for that matter, NOTHING could be sent to you by mail, as you would not a an address that mail can be delivered to
How is the bank assuming google has the power to figure out the accidental recipient's real name and address, without going to court themselves?
A bank teller is just there to act as a nice UI tot he bank's computer system. A good appearance is a key part of UI design, and it is no worse than hiring a pretty newsreader or receptionist: skill is pretty much irrelevant, looks aren't. It is the back-office staff and the loan officers and so on who need to have some skill.
That doesn't sidestep the fact that you would be causing a LOT more damage to the innocent people, who probably had NO idea their bank was capable of such idiocy, than the bank that actually screwed up.
You call them "innocent", but what they actually are are victims.
They are victims with or without this ruling. Their privacy has already been compromised by this bank. They are already on the hook to close out those accounts. This judge's ruling to close down a gmail account doesnt change this fact one bit. All it does is add one more name to the casualty list.
"His name was James Damore."
I was not defending the banks actions, in fact I believe they handled it VERY badly, but the suggestion you gave was even worse.
There are two likely scenarios:
1. the innocent user threw away the email with the data considering it spam. (the judge's decision was unneeded)
2. the not so innocent user downloaded and stored the data on his own machine. (the judge's decision was futile)
The least likely scenario (0.1%) is that he still kept the sensitive data on the google account.
If they can order the removal of an account, why can't they order the removal of a single message???
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Why can't the courts in these cases set up third-party intermediaries to receive the information that the plaintiffs are asking for (such as someone's personally-identifying information) and then have all communications go through that intermediary? This is just the same as e-mails from Craig's List users going through Craig's List instead of directly between the users. It could even be a system where no human ever sees the information. Instead it could be encrypted such that no one would ever be able to dig it out. Then the plaintiff could contact the individual and they could carry on a conversation and straighten things out, without the individual's individual dentifying information ever being disclosed.
Perhaps what we need is a government sponsored but publicly run (and open-source developed) central system to provide this service. It would have to be open ource so that anyone could check to make sure that the system didn't have any back doors.
Without a system like this, then the technique used by this bank technique could become a powerful tool to do an end-run around privacy laws. If I want to find out the personal information about someone, or even shut down their e-mail accounts or all of their internet access, all I have to do is claim to have accidentally sent them private information about someone else. Heck, I could just make up bogus info and send it to the individual. Who would know, because that info would be kept sealed "for the privacy of the people in the list."
The information leaked included social security numbers. If those get out, they're screwed whether they change them or not. And it's not exactly easy to change them.
Why we're using SSNs as if they're a unique identifier AND a password is a separate, far more important issue that won't get discussed for reasons no one who posts on slashdot has yet been able to fathom.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Apparently the Judge was in his dorm room stoned when they discussed the fifth amendment.
The fifth... And the fourth. And fourteenth. And ninth ...
... to use the internet as intended. I run my own mail server, thanks :-) If someone were demanding me to shut down my own accounts, well, at least I'd know about it and wouldn't just shut myself off without my day in court.
When did this start? When I started work, about 30 years ago, some of my friends started working in banks. The rule then was that they had to attend many courses and work 'behind the scenes' in the branch for at least 6 months before being allowed into a customer facing role as a teller.
So was this a mistake or deliberate on the part of the bank employee? What possible email address could be the right one to send this data to? bob123@hmail.com ? And are we to understand that none of this is automated, when loan information on thousands of accounts is transferred from A to B the addresses are typed in by hand? And this information was being sent, why? What did these accounts have in common? How many of these transfers happen daily? The gmail account address came from somewhere; someone's address book, a mailto on a web page, something like that. Surely they already knew the identity of the account's owner. So, would it better for a bank to appear incompetent to its customers, or for it to be known that one of your employees was trying to commit identity fraud? Which one is more actionable on the part of the bank's customers? Of course you send a second email, to yourself, asking that you don't open the first email. That's just basic deniability in case you ever get discovered.
time to auto forward your gmails to hotmail, and auto forward that to ymail, and finally to your work mail, and your domain mail!!
Sounds like another effect of the seemingly ubiquitous principle of "prioritize PR before effectiveness". Priority is put on looking effective or good rather than on being effective. Being foolish (as well as potentially corrupting), it is self-defeating in the long run, as people eventually spot that you're more concerned about looking good than being good, and that has far worse PR effects than you'll manage to accrue through your efforts to look good - in addition to probably negating those efforts.
the affected innocent account holder may not have the means to sue the shit out of that incompetent bank. public prosecution laws are needed to make sure that no party pulls out that kind of stunt on anyone, just because they have the money pull out shitty stunts on any 'small people' they think they may chew down.
its bank's INCOMPETENCE. TWICE. not only once. first, they were incompetent enough to have such lacking information security practices that someone was able to send critical data to a random email account on the web.
second, they were incompetent enough to actually file a suit to the end of hampering an innocent person's life, to whatever extent it may be. and it might be a serious extent, if that person was using his/her gmail account for serious correspondence. and this is despite the ethical concerns of doing something as such.
therefore, i call that bank INCOMPETENT, for that's what they are. anyone who is an account holder of that bank should withdraw their deposits from that bank, for, if their level of incompetence is that high, then it is sure that they are screwing up in many other respects.
public prosecution. we need public prosecution of people and organizations and corporations, in case they try to have their way with the law by filing suits that violate human rights and individual freedoms. they should get their ass fined out of their mouth, so that noone will attempt such shit.
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I seriously, seriously hope my sarcasm meter's broken, because you can't possibly be serious when saying something as reprehensibly stupid as "So, yes, there is a legal obligation to check your inbox on a regular basis". That's the reason you posted as an AC, right? Because you didn't want this coming back to your actual /. account?
This makes me worry a bit... For a while now, I've been receiving the email of some guy who happens to have the same name I've got. Investment shit. At first, I'd notify the idiot who sent me it of the problem, and suggest they contact the guy directly to get a proper email address... But it just goes on and on. I've got no clue what the guy's email is; as the idiots sending the badly-addressed email won't say, and they're obviously not notifying the guy of the problem. So I've started just ignoring the damn things. Let him figure it out.... And now some douchebag american judge might get pissy with my email account because these idiots can't get it right? Makes me want to quit gmail and at least get back onto a canadian mail provider.
I don't get why they didn't just tell google to go in and delete the mis-sent email(s) from the system? I mean, if they person didn't do anything wrong, why request that their email account be deleted entirely? If they're worried the user might have SEEN or copied them, the damage is done either way, the best you can do is remove access...so why have someone's account closed because you fucked up?
In fact, why didn't google suggest that, you know? "How about this, instead of you court-ordering us to delete someone's email account because you're a bunch of idiots, we'll just expunge the offending emails from the system, everyone happy?"
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
> The Reg's earlier story says, "Rocky Mountain Bank had asked to court to keep its suit
> under seal, hoping to avoid panic among its customers and a 'surge of inquiry'
"Yeah," said the bank's press agent, "No need to make a federal case out of...ahhh...nevermind."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.