A representative (he would not identify himself) of Release Technique, from Sherman Oaks, CA, called our business today (4/08/10) and, due to receiving an email from us regarding our business class file transfer and data exchange services, threatened to destroy our servers and data, and subsequently the data belonging to hundreds of our customers, many of whom are Fortune 100 corporations, state governments, and major trade associations such as the ABA. They called on our customer service line and it has an inline digital recording system for purposes of being able to go back to each customer service conversation to be sure we've successfully complied with each request accurately and as our customer has requested. Subsequently this threatening conversation was recorded.
They got an email due to the fact that someone from their organization signed up (or someone using their information signed up for them), on 12/9/09, to receive information from our company via email. Our email included my name, my physical street/mailing address, and my phone number, as well as 2 ways to automatically be removed from our list. If not for this information their representative Despite all the opportunities to do this (they received 6 emails from us between 12/9/09 and today) someone chose to call today and issue threats against our business and the businesses of our customers.
Our emails are so far within the law as well as the "culuture" standards of the internet itself that this individual's reaction could only be called outrageous and seemingly dangerous; we took the threats seriously. We immediately, through our exchange systems, notified the corporations whose data may be at risk and gave them the name, phone number, address and principals' names, of the company, Release Technique, making the threat. More than a dozen of our larger customers have already asked their legal and security personnel to investigate and our data center host, Google, has already been put on notice as well since the threat indicated the attacks would be carried out tomorrow, 4/9. Our primary systems occupy the QualTech facility in Suwanee, Georgia where Google colo's their primary southeastern US systems. We have failover systems dotted around the US and western Europe and do not know to what extent these are also in apparent danger. All data facilities, however, have been put on notice. We have notified the GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) and have forwarded the recorded phone conversation to California and Virginia authorities (Release Technique lists an address in Virginia Beach, VA, in addition to their Sherman Oaks headquarters).
Apparently their personnel have never taken any of their own "stress relieving" courses.
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