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
Comments on “Google Ordered To Shut Down Gmail Account Of User Who Received Unsolicited Banking Info”
Why couldn’t the bank simply ask google to delete the specific E – Mail. If it’s already been read then shutting down the account is useless anyways. If it hasn’t been read then deleting the E – Mail will remedy the problem.
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.
Re: Re:
Asking Google to delete an email is EXACTLY like asking Amazon to remove a book from a Kindle.
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.
Re: Re: Re:
No it isn’t. Those people paid Amazon money to get those books, meaning that they requested the item. This guy didn’t request that email, could probably care less, and certainly didn’t pay Google money for it.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Who says that he didn’t pay Google for the account? Could be a paid Google Mail account (they do offer those business mail account thingies.)
Hey, my gmail account no longer works for some reason. 🙂
Yikes
Banana republics..
So if the Bank sent them that info in the form of a letter in the US Mail, would the court then order the destruction of the wrong recipient’s house?
Re: Re:
No, they would just do a drive-by mailbox bashing.
Re: Re:
Just order the house locked, confiscated, condemned, and sold at auction, for receiving stolen property.
Re: Re:
Awesome analogy!
Re: Re:
LOL! Nice.
Re: Re:
dude where’s my house
Re: Re:
Only if judge is elected and needs contribution for his next campaign.
VRP
I just hope the E – Mail address that got shut down turns out to be the president’s and Obama gets REALLY upset about this whole thing. Other than that it doesn’t look like this whole (very important) issue will get covered by our corrupt mainstream media.
spam
The e-mails probably got filtered as spam, so some poor, clueless sod is wondering why gmail is down.
Re: spam
My thought exactly, even if the spam filter didn’t automatically filter it, I would have tagged it as a part of normal account maintaining.
That is totally screwed up, and I hope that this story gets enough publicity that the Bank in question loses business. Who would want to trust them anyways, at this point? They can’t manage their own private information, and have no compunction destroying someone else’s private information, to cover their own asses? Disgraceful.
Re: Re:
That is totally screwed up, and I hope that this story gets enough publicity that the Bank in question loses business.
The gov’t will just bail them out if that happens.
Reimbursement
Does anyone else wonder how the hell this judgement ever happened? I can understand covering your mistakes can be a pain but who on earth sent the email in the first place?
“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.
Re: Reimbursement
The idiot who sent the email must be the owner or one of the top people. Otherwise, such an idiot would have just gotten themselves fired then IT and PR ordered to remedy what they can.
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!
Moron bank. Ha-ha! *Nelson style*
What I want to know is how fast did this all happen?
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?
Re: Re:
Aug 12: Data is emailed
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.
my god
Really? I must to use google gmail for my job. It’s bad news for me
re: my god
i have to also…it sucks
maybe i’ll try another mail place
Forex Trading
Honestly.. How many people would open up files sent to them from someone they don’t know and claiming to be a bank?
Re: Re:
Seriously. If the accidental recipient had a tiny bit of savvy they would’ve gotten an email from a bank they never heard of with an attachment and deleted it immediately. When the followup questions came, same thing.
My own GMail SPAM folder is loaded with emails allegedly from banks.
And this solved what?
Can anyone tell me what the frak this actually accomplished? I sure as hell hope the bank doesn’t consider this ‘problem solved.’
I have a GMail account that I rarely use (perhaps once or twice a year at most). Given that no reply was made to the bank’s email request, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the account is not one customarily used by the account holder. If this is the case, and certainly Google is in a position to make some kind of a preliminary determination, I fail to see how what is almost certainly a temporary measure is a meaningful violation of whatever legal rights the account holder may have.
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.
Re: Re:
No one’s suggesting it isn’t within Google’s rights to shut down the email account. They can terminate your service at any time, for no reason.
What’s extremely questionable is whether the court has the right to order Google to shut down the email account.
Re: Re: Re:
The court absolutely has the right, there’s just no sensible reason.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The court absolutely douse not have the right. It is a violation of free speech and privacy. It’s also definitely unjust punishment.
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?
Re: rights
Its not about a person’s legal right to a gmail account. Google could decide to stop offering gmail tomorrow and we’d have no recourse. Its about a court’s ability to order a company to terminate a user account based on the independent actions of a separate third party.
Someone spills some DDT in your yard and has your water legally permanently disconnected so it doesn’t spread. Problem solved!
Re: Re:
If I get an unsolicited email from ANY financial institution that I don’t have an active account with, I delete it and go on with my day without reading it. Him not responding means nothing.
I actually hope that this info ends up on Wikileaks. Instead of working with Google and the person they’re treating him like he’s a criminal. It would serve them right if their heavy-handed tactics backfired on them.
Now everyone is checking their gmail accounts…..
DB Deluxe
The judge completely overreacted. The value of confidential information is generally grossly overstated by orders of magnitude. Sounds like a Douche Bag to me….
The correct response is obvious: inform the customers whose account data was released, and issue them new account numbers/logins/whatever when possible, and otherwise inform them to be on the lookout for identity theft (in the case of exposed SSNs, etc). If the victims have a problem with that, they take it up with the BANK, who made the mistake in the first place.
probably...
I could see this happening.
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.
It was probably someone an employee of the bank knew and won’t admit too…I will admit that I have accidentally sent things from work to the wrong person in my address book before because I just entered the first name and let it autofill the rest in a hurry. (I don’t work at a bank or deal with sensitive info) It is still the bank or some employee therein’s fault as this sort of info should not have been being emailed in the first place.
Did google really deactivate the account?
So did Google go ahead and deactivate the account – or would they consider appealing? Maybe one account may not matter to Google – but this could be a really bad precedence.
— Also someone should add Common Sense as a pre-requisite for being a Judge —
Re: Did google really deactivate the account?
You’re forgetting that judges are made from lawyers.
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
If I received an email that was ADDRESSED to me, ie, was not received in error (maybe transmitted in error) then screw Rocky Mountain Bank and I’d be trying to send emails to all those names I had that Rocky Mountain Bank had screwed up and letting them know that Rocky Mountain Bank are idiots.
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.
Re: Re:
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.
Still No Reason
While you can absolutely understand why the bank wants the account shut down, to protect that info,…
Umm, no, I can’t. The info could be removed from the account without shutting the whole thing down.
Re: Still No Reason
Not if the mail was removed from the mailbox.
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
Re: Re: Still No Reason
Not if the mail was removed from the mailbox.
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.
The judge must have been a luddie
Simply deleting the message from his account would have been enough IF he hadn’t seen it, but otherwise, there’s NOTHING that Google could have done. Seriously, why would anyone but a silly luddie think that deleting the account would stop the recipient from using the information if he’d already seen it? Hell, even if the guy was another luddie that didn’t even know how to copy-paste text, he still could have taken screen shots with a Polaroid!
email deleted?
Whenever I receive an email from a strange bank the first thing I do is delete it without even reading what it is about. This had better not be an account of mine or else I will kick up a fuss.
Not the end
I suspect that the user will be able to sue, successfully, for the inconvenience.
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.
So many idiots, so little sence
The judge is an naive idiot. The bank is a professional collective of idiots. The court order is illegal and I hope they all get sued to the hilt.
Other side?
I’m wondering what circumstances didn’t make it into this report. It seems wrong and extreme, but I’d like to have more faith in people, judges in particular.
Re: Other side?
You must be new here.
This is completely ridiculous, and troubles me as a Gmail user, not that it’s really Google’s fault. That said, can’t Google appeal the ruling before doing anything about it? Of course, that would further prove how pointless the order is.
And this is EXACTLY why this whole “cloud” business is a bad idea.
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.
Strange world.
I think the bank reaction is fine even though it was overreacting in how it did it, but the security of their clients should be paramount to then and that is what they did or tried.
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.
psychic thought of the day :
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!
Does the bank not understand that shutting down the account doesnt stop the email. heck by the time the banks goes “oh shi#@” email sent to my gmail account in on my smartphone and my desktop email program has grabbed copies of it and put it in my email archive. Did anyone at google even check to see if it was read, maybe its in a spam folder.
Re: Re:
Google refused to do anything without a court order.
I think the moral of the story is avoid Rocky Mountain Bank at all costs.
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.
Quite Problematic?
“…having a judge deactivate the account of someone who did nothing wrong seems quite problematic.”
In a country where people can be imprisoned and held for years without charges ever even being filed, this is nothing.
Contact the Bank
I think we should consider writing the bank a letter of protest email and seriously let them know how we feel about this. Maybe I am just naive, but I bet if they get a ton of emails about the situation, they may change their mind, look at Lily Allen…
Troubling!
This is extremely troubling, lets hope Google fights this all the way!
I auto forward all my email to 100 gmail account. Through a simple process all 100 accounts stay all synced up. Power through redundancy. Mind after reading this I will have to push my accounts up to 1000 gmail accounts and a few 100 hotmail/yahoo accounts. Can not be to careful and miss out on some special offer from a Nigerian National who desperately needs my help!
Judge Ware
Shocked Judge Ware was the author of this deactivation order. From my personal experience I believe he is very knowledgeable about technology and the internet. I can’t understand how this wouldn’t be a temporary deactivation until the email can be recovered and the a quick investigation into whether the information had been further disseminated.
Motion papers are here: http://drop.io/rockymountaingoogle
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?
Absurd
This is ridiculous. The mail could have been copied and forwarded to heaven knows how many other people by now. is this yet another case of a judge who hasn’t got the first idea of how the internet works?
Re: Absurd
I guess you’re suggesting that it makes no sense to shut the barn door after the horses have run out.
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.
So one wonders...
How much did this incompetent bank pay this crooked judge to cover up the *illegal* act that the bank committed?
More banking incompetence...
I thought all the big mistakes in the banking industry were fixed?
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 😉
Never piss off the man who have the stuff you want
If I’m the owner of the email account, I’ll definitely publish everything that they send me online to shame the bank. Never ever piss off the person who had something you want. If you do it the nice way, the person might actually listen and comply.
I hope so much for the one who got the E – Mail that she/he can make a lot of money selling the confidential information to someone with enough power to shut down the Bank and fire the Court …
Rocky Mountain Bank is wrong
This just blows my mind. I’m sorry, but Rocky Mountain Bank was in the wrong here. Totally in the wrong. They should have reprimanded their employee instead. I would have to question as to WHY did the employee have to email ANYONE a list of sensitive information? Do people NOT know or realize that emailing from one address to another is NOT safe or confidential as we are lead to believe. Emails can be intercepted along the route by hackers and those who use script programs to spy on mail servers and such.
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.
Re: Rocky Mountain Bank is wrong
I agree with you except on the suing Google part; Google was in a tough situation, they did what they did because of a court order, not out of their own will.
Who will be the next?
Yep, that is right, How are going to be the next luck boy? Man, that´s an absurd.
This judge is a complete internet ignorant. An email is like a house number, y can´t lose it, can?
So disgusting… 😛
I don’t think this is the end of the world…I like gmail though.
This is ridiculous. As a Gmail user this worries me a lot.
gmail
you can stick gmail where the sun don’t shine it is so bad states are shiting gmail down because it is so unsafe ….
gmail is crazy
That is just crazy. Did this ever get resolved?
Re: gmail is crazy
Honestly I don’t think it did. Crazy…
Unbelievable
Even though this post is on the older side it is crazy reading this sort of thing.
GMAIL
Love gmail – just don’t know how true this is.
close my gmail account
can you plaese close my g mail accopunt as this is some think that i don.t need close the dame thing for me if you can as i what by uiseing it as from the 5-4-2013 kind regareds steven griffiths and do me afather stop messing around and get reall thank,s and i get no intrest in going to iland ever so fuck off
Yesterday I got notice that my Gmail account will be terminated & very much worried,so please do not cancell my account