Ooops!
Wonder how many aeons will pass before you live this one down...
Between 8:58 and 10:20 BST this morning we sent an email to 3,521 of you that contained the names and email addresses of 46,524 of our readers. Obviously, this was an error. The two-stage send process that is the norm for all of our mailers was over-looked because someone was in a hurry. We would like to offer our genuine and …
This post has been deleted by its author
Pretty quick to blame the "tit in the IT dept" aren't you sunshine? Why would someone in IT be sending out emails though? It's more likely to be someone in marketing or management - that's my usual blame target. People who don't listen to IT tell them for the Nth bloody time to not do it that way.
Well, what's a copy worth to you? Genuine, live email addresses, just waiting for you to send them anything you like. All you need is to make sure it appears to come from The Register, and especially titles like "BOFH" will ensure it'll get opened.
Actually, no, I'm keeping it for myself. Still have some water in powder form to sell..
Duh. Duh. Duh. Next time, drink coffee first, THEN start work...
Go on, Reg, tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth..
Reg, good that you fessed, but when you've told 3,521 of the nosiest and nosiest readers around, there was no other option.
But once you'd decided to fess, there was no point fudging, and that explanation is straight from the fudge factory.
You'd have got more credibility by telling the whole, awful truth. Or, is it that the Reg minion really meant to send out bulk email addresses, unencrypted, by email, but just got the wrong address list!
And when they realised it was hitting the fan, they tried to kill the send, but only managed to do it after it had got down to the 3,521st address!!.
I think we should be told.
I'm not sure that the Register marketing department would be setting SQL flags (whatever they are?) or getting anywhere near SQL. I presume they were adding field codes, which should always be programmed to make sure that the sender can see a post merged sample before sending.
Pretty freakin' poor show if you ask me. A company who goes to great pleasure in sneering at other organisations who commit the same mistake, then doesn't have the same tight controls it 'demands' of others is more than a bit hypocritical.
I wonder whether the Register would have been so forthcoming in divulging this information if it wasn't so readily going to be exposed very quickly by one of the thousands who received it?
I'm sure "lessons will be learned", "procedures will be tightened" and so forth in line with everyone else and it will be done about the same time they find $20 to fork out on an SSL certificate to protect your login to the site!
However, now for some people there will be some nice targeted spam with your name attached and some nice IT related text. Luckily no will fall for the inevitable targeted phishing attacks - will they?
How on earth are they hyporcritical??
hypocritcial - of the natureof hypocrisy, or pretense of having virtues, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually possess.
Key word being pretense - in no way did they show pretense in not wanting to live up to these values .... they just screwed up! You're saying that they never had any intention of repsecting privacy???
Fail.
many millions await you. Blocking this from happening would have required a system to scan the content of the message being sent and to detect that it contained thousands of addresses rather than standard marketing material. Maybe not so difficult in this instance, but making it 100% effective would be a challenge.
The recent Hays cockup was caused (I have it on unreliable authority) <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/24/hays_rbs_email_fail/> by someone picking the wrong file to attach from a directory - instead of a standard HR attachment, they got a list of everyone's day rates.
It's an old but true saying: anyone can make a system foolproof; with some effort and skill you can even make it idiotproof; but no-one will ever make a system cretinproof.
I notice the reason you didn't put your name on your puppet is because you have absolutely zero idea of what you speak. The protections to stop this kind of idiocy aren't that hard. Marketing database, check emails against customers, yes 4 thou customers, check respondent companies, check, many companies get our email customers, no, false, stop... See, pretty easy logic. Now please refrain from talking crap...