Recently an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming followed up on a request by a customer to email loan documents to a Gmail address. Unfortunately, after doing so, the employee realized that they had emailed the documents to the wrong Gmail address. Oops. Not only that, but they had accidentally included a file containing the identities, addresses, loan information, and tax identification information of more than 1300 Rocky Mountain Bank customers – 1325 to be exact. OOPS. All to a Gmail address belong to nobody-knows-who (presumably the error occurred when the Rocky Mountain Bank employee typoed the Gmail address).
After a second email to the address of the unknown Gmailer, asking them to please delete the previous email unopened, and getting no response to either email, the Bank contacted Google for help in trying to ensure that the material remain confidential.
Of course, Google has a duty to protect the privacy of their own users, and so was unable to help the bank. Unless, they explained to the bank, the bank could produce a subpoena or other legal process compelling Google to share that information.
So the bank has sued Google, to compel them to reveal the identity of the holder of the mystery Gmail account.
This is, of course, legally how it should play out, but it certainly doesn’t help those 1325 Rocky Mountain Bank customers whose information has been compromised, and who are left dangling while this plays through the legal system.
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