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Ever sent something and then immediately regretted it the instant it was out of your control? If you haven’t, you’re either Amish or a liar. Or maybe an Amish liar, but I don’t think those exist. Either way, I’m sure there are millions of people who would have paid everything in their bank account to throw a grappling hook after an email sent in anger, or addressed to the wrong person.
Turns out, if you have a certain amount of money, you CAN do that, and by certain amount of money, I mean, the full legal resources of a major financial institution. An email containing sensitive brokerage information (read: which company card to pay the hookers with) was mistakenly sent to the wrong email address by a Goldman Sachs employee. Apparently some genius (who likely no longer has a job) sent this message to an @gmail.com account rather than the intended gs.com, a mistake likely caused by autocorrect, or multitasking while watching porn at a work.
The process to rescind an email is about as complicated as you’d expect. Goldman filed a court order on Friday, and has reported that Google complied with their request. I’m not sure how exactly the process for getting a court order goes, but I imagine that the reasons have to be a little more urgent than, “I accidentally sent a picture of my dong to my stepmom.” Representatives of Goldman claim that Google has assured them the email in question was retrieved before it could be opened by the unintended recipient, although I imagine that even if it had been, nothing would have likely come of it. I can’t imagine that barrymidwesterson@gmail.com would have any more idea what convoluted information he was looking at than he would if Coca Cola had accidentally sent him their secret recipe (although I imagine Coke would just default to assassination in that case). In any event, the incident seems to have gone off without a hitch, showing the rest of America yet again that if you’re successful enough on Wall Street, you literally have superpowers.
Interestingly enough, Google has declined to comment, likely because they’re busy figuring out how to exploit the free financial secrets that now lie within their servers. Thanks for giving the big G more ammunition in its quest for world domination, Goldman. You guys are the real MVPs.
[via Reuters]
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For those who use Outlook and you accidentally send an ESPN link to the wrong person, immediately open the e-mail from Sent Items, go to the “Actions” button in the middle, click “Recall this Message” and do it as fast as you can. Actually works if the recipient hasn’t opened it yet.
Right? I thought everyone was aware of that. I know that’s been my saving grace more than once.