It seems that Google just can’t keep out of court, even when it hasn’t done anything itself. In a monumental blunder, an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank in the USA was supposed to email loan documents to a customer’s email address, but somehow (and we really don’t know how this could happen) managed to email the confidential details of 1,325 customers to a different email address – a Gmail address.
This prompted the panicked bank to request that the owner of the email delete the file without opening it, but naturally they received no response.
The confidential details on the customers contained information such as loan details and tax ID numbers.
After receiving no reply from the email in question, the bank tried to contact Google, owners of Gmail, to ask for the identity of the holder of the email address, to which Google naturally refused.
The bank is now suing Google for the identity of the owner of the Gmail.
According to the Register, Google stated:
When Google receives legal process, such as court orders and subpoenas, where possible we promptly provide notice to users to allow them to object to those requests for information. In this case, [Rocky Mountain Bank] must comply with proper court process, and the court has required it to resubmit its papers. Once we have a chance to review these papers, we will determine our response.
This is the second case in as many months where Google has been sued for the identity of someone, after Liskula Cohen sued them for the identity of a blogger who wrote about her in New York.
[...] week we reported how Google was once again in court, this time because of the Rocky Mountain Bank who were taking legal action to get Google to reveal the identity of the owner of an email address [...]