Canadian startup darling Hootsuite, found itself with pie on its face when the company ended up sending out thousands of emails to various users that contained the private information of other users. The social media management software developer sent out an email ealy this week that included the names and emails of other users so that they were clearly visible to all recipients.
The email was meant to remind users that their 60-day Hootsuite Pro trials were going to expire and that they needed to take action as soon as possible. The email ended up with a lot more information than just the reminder as some people received e-mail with the addresses of other users in the “To” field.
As expected, the social media savvy users of Hootesuite took to the internet to vent their feelings. Many used the micro blogging site Twitter to reveal the company’s mistake and voice their concerns. Hootsuite took the time to respond to each of the individual tweets and apologized to their users. They also let everyone know that they had quickly resolved the problem. The startup blamed the “integration of Seesmic accounts with [its] existing HootSuite user accounts” as the reason for the mistake and gave people whose data was revealed a “product credit” to make up for the mistake.
The Hootsuite note to effected users is below:
“Today, November 10th at approximately 4 AM PST, HootSuite experienced a technical issue related to our integration of Seesmic accounts with our existing HootSuite user accounts. The failing system resulted in email notifications intended for our new Seesmic users being sent out repeatedly and in some cases user email addresses were exposed in the message headers. The issue has since been contained but will likely continue to cause concern over the next few days as people who were away from their computers and email continue to discover the issue. The incident occurred to under 4000 emails.
At this time, we are requesting that recipients destroy the messages in order to help us contain the issue. Privacy is a paramount concern for HootSuite and this is in no way a reflection of the respect we have for our users and their privacy. For our customers and people who receive our regular marketing or product notifications, please be assured that your data is safe and is not directly connected to this failed system in any way. The HootSuite team and I, are extremely sorry that this took place and that we were not able to contain the issue sooner.
For users who were affected, please stay tuned for a product credit as a further sign of our utmost respect and desire to make things right.
~Ryan Holmes, CEO”
Source: CNET
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