Bank's Suit Over E-Mail Data Breach Can't Be Sealed, Judge Says
When a customer of Rocky Mountain Bank needed information, an employee promptly sent it by e-mail.
Unfortunately, the Gmail address to which the material was delivered apparently belonged to someone else–and an attachment that should not have been sent contained confidential information about more than 1,300 individual and business accounts, according to Information Week.
The bank is now seeking a court order requiring Google to reveal the identity of the individual to whose e-mail account the information was sent. However, a federal judge decided Friday that the lawsuit the bank filed in the Northern District of California over the issue cannot be kept confidential:
“An attempt by a bank to shield information about an unauthorized disclosure of confidential customer information until it can determine whether or not that information has been further disclosed and/or misused does not constitute a compelling reason that overrides the public’s common law right of access to court filings,” ruled U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte.
