Met Police admits victims' email address sharing error - how to avoid it happening to you

This article on BBC News caught my eye today. Scotland Yard has admitted inadvertently sharing the email addresses of more than 1,000 victims of crime with other victims. A Met spokesman said "In total 1,136 emails were sent out in seven batches of between 119 and 198 recipients but because the addresses were put in the wrong box they were visible to the other recipients in the batch." What seems apparent from this quote is that the Met was using its in-house email client (for example Outlook or similar) to mass e-mail people and instead of putting the email addresses in the "bcc" blind copy box, it placed the emails in the "cc" box instead meaning all recipients could see each others' addresses. The Information Commissioner's Office comments "We will be making enquiries into the circumstances of the alleged breach of the Data Protection Act before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken." The maximum penalty is £500,000 for "the most serious cases".  Ouch! Mistakes like this are remarakbly simple to avoid and it's astonishing the Met were not better informed on how to send mass emails of this nature. How to avoid this happening to you. The simple solution is never to use your email program to send out newsletters or similar to large numbers of people. Instead use an email service provider such as Campaign Monitor. It doesn't cost much and it will help you avoid serious data breaches. Alternatively, just outsource your e-newsletter production to Expertise on Tap and we'll ensure you stay within the law.