Receive an email, get your account shut down

Suppose you get Internet email (who doesn't). Suppose that someone somewhere on Al Gore's Intartubes sends you an email by mistake - someone at a bank, let's say. They meant to send it to someone else, but sent it to you. Imagine that they included a file that contained all sorts of sensitive data about their customers: bank account numbers and so forth.

Seems like they screwed up big time, right? So what should happen?

Well, if the bank is Rocky Mountain Bank in Wyoming, they'd sue to get your email account frozen. And some mouth breathing Judge would issue a court order to force your email provider to freeze it:

When Google refused to release the identity of the person behind the Gmail account, the bank sued. Last week, Google told The Reg it would not release the users identity unless it receives a subpoena or court order, and such an order soon arrived.

Judge James Ware of the US district court for the northern district of California issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday, insisting that Google deactivate the account.

Looks like the account is going to be frozen, and remain frozen, until October 5 at the earliest.

Let's play "Count the idiots", shall we?

1. Whoever at Rocky Mountain Bank in Wyoming sent the wrong email to the wrong address.

2. Whoever at Rocky Mountain Bank in Wyoming refused to approve budget for their IT department to deploy Data Loss Prevention technology, which would likely have blocked the email before it went out onto Al Gore's Intarwebz.

3. Whoever at Rocky Mountain Bank in Wyoming decided that a lawsuit targeting the innocent bystanders why were subject to the fallout from the above screw-ups.

4. Judge James Ware of the US district court for the northern district of Californi, who seemingly does not get enough oxygen at the high altitudes experienced in Wyoming. Or something.

That's one powerful lot of Due Diligence failures, all wired in series.