Check the address before sending an e-mail
October 19, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security
We’ve all sent e-mails to the wrong address before. But hopefully the message didn’t include confidential information about 1,300 customers.
That’s what recently happened to a bank employee in Wyoming. When attempting to e-mail his boss, he accidentally entered the wrong Gmail address and didn’t realize until after he’d sent it.
The e-mail contained an attachment with info about 1,325 individual and business customers, including names, addresses, social security or tax ID numbers, and loan information, the Daily Examiner reports.
The bank went into panic mode and e-mailed the mystery recipient, asking him or her to delete the message without reading. When no one responded, the company asked Google about the status of the account. Google refused to give any information, claiming users’ privacy rights.
So the bank filed court papers demanding Google cooperate. The papers were filed “under seal” (i.e., not open to the public”), because the bank didn’t want to “needlessly panic” its customers before finding out if someone actually read the e-mail with the sensitive attachment.
The court refused to keep the case a secretive. Which is why customers get to read about the potential identity in the paper, rather than hear it from the company.
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Tags: bank, e-mail, identity theft
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