Yesterday we made a mistake. We sent an email in which some members could see the names and email addresses of a number of other members. Here’s the action we’re taking.
We sincerely apologise for this. We want to explain to you what happened and our next steps.
This information was shared with 63 members of The Correspondent. Other similar mailings involved 325 members of our Dutch edition, De Correspondent.
These are members who follow specific author(s) or conversations on our platform. Some of our members received the names and email data of a few of our members, while others received names and data of several hundred members.
We were alerted to this error in an email from a member (thank you!). We immediately stopped sending out all emails, while we worked to identify the source of the error and how many people were affected.
We found that a mistake occurred during an update of our mail system. At this point, we have partially remedied this error. Until this problem is fully resolved, we will not send out further emails of this kind (i.e. specific notification emails). The problem does not affect our regular newsletters, which you will continue to receive.
Privacy and transparency are both fundamental principles of our organisation. That’s why we think it’s important to make you aware of the error and explain how we are dealing with it.
We have emailed the members who are directly affected, and write to you now to ensure all our members are informed. We will also report this incident to the Personal Data Authority in the Netherlands. Separately, we have sought guidance from independent privacy experts.
Any questions? Please write them below, and we’ll answer them as clearly as possible.
