• Michael R (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the misspelled "Secnod"

  • (nodebb)

    It could be worse. Back early this century, my firm made emergency notification mass-blast software among many other things for the police / fire/ emergency management community. That stuff is commonplace now, but this was pretty gee-whiz back in those days.

    Which software the head salesbeast once demonstrated to a small in-person audience of emergency management managers by sending them all a test message "There's been a crash at [the real name of the local airliner airport]". But he selected a much larger audience of local EM folks than he intended. Much consternation ensued all over the county as real response plans got triggered, mass confusion reigned, and instant confirmation or debunking via www and social media had not yet been invented.

  • (nodebb) in reply to WTFGuy

    Which software the head salesbeast once demonstrated to a small in-person audience of emergency management managers by sending them all a test message "There's been a crash at [the real name of the local airliner airport]". But he selected a much larger audience of local EM folks than he intended. Much consternation ensued all over the county as real response plans got triggered, mass confusion reigned, and instant confirmation or debunking via www and social media had not yet been invented.

    TRWTF is nobody thought to make sure the words "This is a test message" did not appear anywhere. We do periodic tests of our system that will text/email some 1,300 employees if there is an emergency or if the company is closing due to bad weather or a real emergency. ALL of those always say "This is a test message -- please disregard". The tests are done to collect bounced emails (usually typos) so they can be corrected in case there is a real emergency.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Bananafish

    TRWTF is nobody thought to make sure the words "This is a test message" did not appear anywhere.

    Surely you meant this:

    TRWTF is nobody thought to make sure the words "This is a test message" did appear somewhere.

    Because surely you want to be sure it does say that it's a test, rather than that it isn't a test.

  • (nodebb)

    Either way, you need the salesbeasts to abide by the requirement to use the test feature. This was not a technology failure.

  • Fizzlecist (unregistered)

    My first thought when I started reading this was that it was a scam email, especially with the urgency & just before a long weekend

  • (nodebb) in reply to Fizzlecist

    Yep, I too thought that this was a scam for exactly those reasons, especially since scammers seem to have no problems in obtaining what should be protected sensitive PII. Murica needs GDPR-style protection for PII, but of course that ain't gonna happen any time soon.

  • Twasink (unregistered)

    They were super sorry about the stress they caused, but not sorry enough to offer compensation in any way.

  • 516052 (unregistered) in reply to Bananafish

    Do you really think it would matter? They could have written it down in font 72 block red letters and people would not have read it anyway.

  • Sean Fhearsalach (unregistered) in reply to 516052

    This!

  • gws (unregistered)

    There are various things that "mean never having to say you're sorry" but when 'sorry' means never having to pay for your mistakes, why even bother. It's a whole 'nother level of shamelessness.

  • (nodebb)

    The real screwup is in the email filter, which should have identified it as SPAM.

Leave a comment on “The Thanksgiving Shakedown”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #687992:

Log Out

« Return to Article