By Harry McCracken | Monday, September 28, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Rocky Mountain Bank–the institution that reportedly sent a Gmail user a list of its customers’ names, Social Security Numbers, and loan information by accident, then went to court to force Google to disable the account–has taken a step in the right direction. Elinor Mills at Cnet reports:
“After notifying the account owner, we complied with the court’s order. However, after working with Rocky Mountain Bank and the court, we resolved the issue around the bank’s error, and both sides have agreed to vacate the TRO and dismiss the case,” [Google’s Andrew Pederson] said.
While we regret that the user has been locked out of their account through no fault of their own, we’re not legally able to reactivate the account until the court approves our motion to dismiss the case and vacate the TRO,” Pederson added. “We’re hopeful that the court will act quickly, and as soon as the motion is approved, we’ll reactivate the account.”
Good! Case almost closed, I hope–although I wonder how Rocky Mountain is doing at alerting the customers whose privacy was apparently compromised by the bank’s actions, and whether any of them our contemplating legal action of their own…
September 28th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Personally, I think the person who had their account deactivated should sue for loss of their email account (assuming it was important to them).
Deactivating an email account with no responsibility or renumeration sets a bad precedent.
I know if I lost my main email account, it could cost me financially by losing access to possible work and contact with people. Recreating it would cost a fair amount of time.
September 29th, 2009 at 5:03 am
OK, the person who uses the email account will get it back.
But what about the real question?
Why was a bank sending a list of this very personal information in (unencrypted?) email? Sending confidential information via unencrypted email isn’t the proper way to convey the information. Who sent the information? The bank employees need some training in proper electronic methods of safeguarding information.