What if you could “unsend” an email? Thats what Goldman Sachs wants Google to do
Have you ever sent an email and wished you could “un-send” it?
That is what happened to A Goldman Sachs employee when instead of sending a message to a gs.com email address, it went to a stranger with a Gmail account.
The email happened to contain the confidential data of a client and with a request, Google blocked access to the message.
However, the financial firm wants the internet giant to go one step further and actually delete the email. And that’s where the two companies find themselves at a legal stalemate.
Google says it can’t and won’t delete a message from a user’s account without their consent, unless compelled to by a court order. So Goldman has filed a complaint in a New York state court seeking just that.
Goldman and its clients understandably want to avoid the email becoming public knowledge. The company stands to lose not only money, but it could also suffer damage to its reputation.
On the other hand, if Google were to simply delete a random user’s email because a message was sent on accident it could set a troublesome precedent. While “unsending” an email would still involve jumping through serious hoops, accepting a mistake as reason enough to delete a message from a user’s account would set an extremely low legal bar.
Source: EnGadget
