A judge ruled on September 23rd that the Gmail account to which personally identifiable information was inadvertently sent must be deactivated. The account, which was the recipient of an errant message from an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank, was mentioned in an earlier post regarding disclosure of the data breach. The ruling also included a clause requiring Google to release the name of the account holder and his contact information to the bank. The bank had contacted the account holder through the email address in question, but did not receive a response.
This unprecedented ruling is viewed as rather controversial in legal circles, because it can be considered an affront to the account holder’s First Amendment rights to communicate online, as well as privacy rights.
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