The saga of Google and Wilson, Wyo.-based Rocky Mountain Bank just keeps getting odder and odder.
According to CNET, it has now been confirmed that the unintended recipient of the email containing sensitive information on 1,300 customers of Rocky Mountain Bank was never even opened:
“Rocky Mountain Bank, working with Google (through court order), confirmed on Thursday of last week that the e-mail containing client information was never opened and has now been permanently destroyed by Google’s system,” Tina Martinez, general counsel for Rocky Mountain Capital, wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
“As a result, no customer data of any sort has been viewed or used by any inappropriate user during this data lapse,” Martinez wrote. “Rocky Mountain Bank acted to protect its customer’s confidential information. That objective was accomplished. The matter is now closed and the TRO (temporary restraining order) entered on September 23, 2009 is now vacated.”
Maybe it went to his SPAM filter. Or maybe he’s just smart. I mean, “Rocky Mountain Bank”? How tacky is that? I’m not about to open any email from a “Rocky Mountain Bank”, especially with an attachment.
So now we learn that a completely innocent person lost access to their Gmail account over absolutely nothing. And that is where this story really starts to irk me as CNET posted an update to this story:
Update 4:35 p.m. PDT:The bank did not take any action against the worker who sent the e-mail, the bank’s lawyer said.
Okay, excuse me, but … WHAT?!? You’re telling me that this bank took massive legal action against this completely innocent person, had them locked out of their email account, and yet the employee who actually messed up has had no action taken against them? Are you kidding me? This employee potentially compromised the personal data of 1,300 customers, they are the reason this whole saga started, and yet nothing happens to them. I am not suggesting they should be fired, everyone makes mistakes, but nothing?
You know, I can tell you with absolute certainty, I will never bank at Rocky Mountain Bank, course, they mis-fire many more emails and it won’t matter, they’ll find a way to mess with you anyway.
It seems that Google and Wilson, Wyo.-based Rocky Mountain Bank have reached an agreement over the email the bank sent to the wrong email address and resulted in that account being closed.
The other day we reported on a story about Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User’s Gmail Account, about how a bank had sent an email to an unintended recipient. When the owner of that account didn’t reply to their emails requesting that the document containing the confidential information of 1300 accounts be destroyed, they went to Google to request the person’s identification. Google told them they would need a court order for that, so the bank did go to court, and the judge not only ordered the information turned over, but also ordered Google to shut down the Gmail account in question.
Well the good news is that Google did indeed comply with the order, but they have now talked things over with the bank and an agreement has been reached.
Google spokesman Andrew Pederson spoke with CNET and said the following:
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.
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. We’re hopeful that the court will act quickly, and as soon as the motion is approved, we’ll reactivate the account.
While it is great to see Google fought this, it doesn’t change the fact the original ruling was made. How long is it before we see another case such as this pop up with a similar resolution? This is still a troubling ruling by the original judge in the case, and one I doubt we have heard the last of.
“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”
I think the big question at this point is what is the user engagement and retention on these apps? Just because they get downloaded doesn’t mean they are being used on a regular basis. This has been the source of many studies at this point, and almost all of them find that after the initial download, the users tend to dwindle off the usage of them pretty rapidly. Of course this doesn’t matter on Apple’s end, but it is still interesting to think about, especially on the paid apps. Apple did not specify the number of free-to-paid apps downloaded, which I think would actually be a far more interesting number to look at, but something I doubt they will ever announce.
We aren’t sure who it is that still reads spam, let alone makes purchases from it, but please stop.
According to Ars Technica, a security researcher from Sophos names Dmitry Samosseiko did some sleuthing, and was able to find his way into the administrative backend of a spamming network. What he discovered was that there is still big money being made from spam emails, and the conclusion is that so long as people continue to purchase Viagra and other drugs via these emails, we will all suffer.
In a lengthy report (PDF link), Mr. Samosseiko details how the one spam network he got into has about 30 sales a day, totaling up to $4,000. $1,600 of that goes to the spam software generator, a group named GlavMed, while the rest goes to the person using the spam bots. In other words, GlavMed makes around $584,000 a year from spam, and this is just one of possibly many spam networks set up by them.
The latest iteration of spam seems to be centered on Russians setting up the networks to sell the drugs that come out of Canadian pharmacies. While there is no way to know for sure, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that this is tied in with the Russian mob, but that is purely speculation on my own part.
It is amazing to me that there are still people even reading their spam emails after the endless warnings that have been made by security groups over the dangers of even opening these emails, let alone clicking on any links in them. You are opening yourself up to viruses, Trojan horses, identity theft and any other slew of nastiness by even reading this junk mail.
The other problem is that you are subjecting everyone else on the Internet to continue receiving them because even a small percentage of them work. It costs next to nothing to send out hundreds of thousands of spam emails, so why should the spammers care if only 30 a day result in a sale? The only way for this to end is for everyone to just stop looking at them, but somehow I doubt that will ever happen.
Maybe we need a new slogan, something like, “Every time you read a spam email, God kills a kitten”. Think that would finally get the point across?
It seems that even if you are completely innocent, you can lose your email account if a bank wants you to.
I really try to avoid blogging on the same subject on two blogs, but this case is so frightening, it has to be brought to the attention of many people as possible. You can see my more journalistic effort on this news over at Tech.BLORGE.com, but over here, where I’m the boss, I’m going to be a bit more blunt on my feelings about it.
The short version of the story is that Wilson, Wyo.-based Rocky Mountain Bank emailed out a list of 1,300 customers of its bank on Aug. 12th. This list included their names, addresses, social security numbers and loan information, in other words, highly sensitive information. After sending out the email, someone at the bank realized it had been sent to the wrong Gmail account. They emailed the account that had sent it to and instructed whomever received it to destroy it without opening it.
When the bank did not hear back from the person, they contacted Google demanding that the identity of the account holder be turned over to them. Google said that due to their privacy rules, a court order was needed to do such. The bank then went to court and demanded not only an order for the information, but also for Google to deactivate the account. U.S. District Court Judge James Ware in the northern district of California issued the order this past Wednesday. The bank asked for it to be done under seal, but U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte denied that request.
There is no indication if Google has obeyed the order yet, but that doesn’t change the fact that this order should have never been issued. The order for the person’s information is perfectly reasonable, but to ask for the account to be deactivated, and for the judge to agree to this, is just beyond the pale of good sense. A person, who’s only crime is that he received an unintended email, has been stripped of his email account, something that could be life altering for a large number of individuals.
Online Media Daily spoke with John Morris, general counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, about the subject. Here’s what he said:
It’s outrageous that the bank asked for this, and it’s outrageous that the court granted it. What right does the bank have and go suspend the email account of a completely innocent person? At the end of the day, the bank obviously screwed up. But it should not be bringing a lawsuit against two completely innocent parties and disrupting one of the innocent party’s email contact to the world.
Other lawyers are bringing up possible First Amendment ramifications of the case, saying that this significantly impacts the individuals rights to communicate online. I think they may be overstating the First Amendment aspects of the case, but then again, I’m not a Constitutional lawyer. It could easily be argued that no one has a “right” to communicating online at all, but I could be wrong in that aspect also.
What does trouble me is that there is no mention of proof that this person either read the emails from the bank, or might not even be logging into their account. If it’s the latter, then this person has had their identity revealed and been drug through court for absolutely nothing. Heck, there is even a chance the emails went to their spam folder.
No matter how you look at this case it is troubling, and I am sure this isn’t the last we’ve heard of it. I would especially like to hear how Judge Ware felt justified in deactivating the account.
This is a scary, scary time for all email users after this case.
You! Yes, you! Step away from your Facebook account!
According to a new report released by Nielsen, the amount of time Internet users spend on social networks such as Facebook has tripled in the past year. In Aug. 2008, users reported that just 6% of the time they spent online was taken up by browsing social networks and blogs, but as of Aug. 2009 that time has skyrocketed to 17%.
“This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen’s online division. “While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”
So who does this really matter to? Advertisers, of course. Spending of ad dollars on social networks and blogs increased 119% year over year. $49 million was the amount spent in Aug. 2008 up to a staggering $108 million in Aug. 2009. These numbers represent a change from 7% of all online ad dollars in 2008 to 15% of ad dollars in 2009.
Of course, this amount of ad revenue is still a drop in the bucket compared to what is spent on other mediums, but if these trends continue, then you’re going to see social media becoming an even bigger factor in future ad dollars, and also where people spend their time.
It would seem that if your company has no discernible source of income, you can still get investors to pour millions of dollars into it.
Twitter, the favorite microblogging service of just about every one under the sun, looks set to bring in a third round of funding in the neighborhood of $100 million. This is impressive for two reasons: the rumored valuation of the company is $1 billion now, four times higher than it was just this past February, and the second aspect is that the company has still yet to earn any money.
The running joke around the tech blogosphere is that the true Twitter monetization plan is to just keep pulling in funding, and with the way things are going at the company, you have to wonder if that is true. Even though the service is now three-and-a-half-years-old, it has not yet made money, or even made clear how it plans to do so. Yet, in spite of this fact, people just keep throwing money at it in the way of funding.
According to The Wall street Journal, the latest round of funding includes some pretty impressive names to boot. The new investors include Insight Venture Partners, a New York venture capital firm, T. Rowe Price, the mutual fund company. Returnign to the table yet again are the current investors Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.
Apparently Twitter was only looking for $50 million this time around, but the investors thought differently and gave them $100 million for future investments in infrastructure and to keep growing the company.
I wish I could sit around making no money and have people just handing me funding.
Ever wished you could leave a comment about a website that had no commenting system? Well, thanks to Google’s latest product, now you can.
Google announced a new addition to its popular Google Toolbar today, Google Sidewiki. Any browser that can run the Google Toolbar will now be able to have a pop out window on the side that you can open up and see what other people are saying about it. You can also add your own thoughts, or if no one has started a Sidewiki for it yet, you can.
While Google is promoting this as a way for Web surfers to help one another and to get more information, this also seems like it could be ripe for abuse. Imagine a business getting a ton of slanderous Sidewiki comments. True or not, it could ruin its reputation and they have no control over it.
It also could be seen as a bad thing by blog owners because people might start using it more than the comment system built into the site.
While it’s an interesting idea, the possible abuses are rather frightening. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. Here is a video explaining a bit more about what it does.
People who already have the Google Toolbar installed can expect to see the buttons show up shortly, but if you can’t wait, you can go download a new copy here to get the service immediately.
Before you go off scratching your head if you haven’t heard of push. Imagine that currently on your iPhone it uses “pull” technology which has to send a message to your Gmail account to check for messages. This can be a slow process, and depending on how long of a time interval you have your email set for, this can take quite a while, and is honestly pretty archaic.
Now, with “push” technology, the Gmail account know to send the email on to your device as soon as it receives it, so as soon as you open your inbox on your device, the email is sitting there waiting for, sometimes within seconds of when your inbox got it. This is a far more efficient way to deal with your email on your device and can be a huge time saver.
All of this is being done via Google Sync, a product Google introduced earlier this year that allows you to synchronize your contacts and calendar between your phone and account. If you already have that product installed, all you have to do is change some settings and your email will sync also now. You can learn how to do all of this by visiting the link.
If you are an AT&T wireless customer, and get lousy reception in your home or office, then the new AT&T 3G MicroCell may be the answer to your nightmares.
The MicroCell is a new femtocell device from AT&T that will allow you to boost your voice and data connections in the places in your home or office that lack good coverage. Essentially it is a miniature cell phone tower in your home that plugs in to your high speed Internet network, and it then routes your calls over the Web. Due to your calls not being on the main cell network, you will get unlimited calls with the MicroCell, meaning that your minutes will only need ot be used when you’re out and about.
While AT&T is late to the femtocell party (T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon have all released their own versions), that didn’t stop AT&T from deciding they should be the most expensive: T-Mobile is $10 a month, Sprint is $99 for the unit and $20 a month and Verizon is a one time purchase of $250. Well, AT&T decided that the MicroCell should be $150 and then $20 a month.
While some argue that these devices shouldn’t even need to exist, and that the companies should just erect more towers, that simply isn’t practical in a lot of areas. As someone who lives out in the woods, I never got angry with Sprint that I couldn’t get any bars in my basement, I choose to live out here, so that’s my fault. I love my Sprint Airave, and love that I now have 5 bars in almost every room of my house, so it’s worth it to me, but I do have to agree that considering my calls now go out over the Internet instead of Sprint’s network, I really shouldn’t have to pay a monthly fee. For the actual device? Yes. For the right to use it? No. Now add AT&T upping the price even more, and it just gets sillier.
For now the device is being tested only in Charlotte, NC, but it should be available nationwide down the road somewhere.
The saga of Google and Wilson, Wyo.-based Rocky Mountain Bank just keeps getting odder and odder.
It seems that Google and Wilson, Wyo.-based Rocky Mountain Bank have reached an agreement over the email the bank sent to the wrong email address and resulted in that account being closed.
It would seem people really enjoy downloading apps to their iPhone and iPod Touch units.
We aren’t sure who it is that still reads spam, let alone makes purchases from it, but please stop.
You! Yes, you! Step away from your Facebook account!
It would seem that if your company has no discernible source of income, you can still get investors to pour millions of dollars into it.
Ever wished you could leave a comment about a website that had no commenting system? Well, thanks to Google’s latest product, now you can.
If you are an AT&T wireless customer, and get lousy reception in your home or office, then the new AT&T 3G MicroCell may be the answer to your nightmares.
