14 DAY TRIAL // The Dolphin Browser team accidentally exposed the email addresses of its beta testers by including them in the list of recipients for a recent message.
The number of exposed email addresses is into the thousands and according to reactions on Twitterl, people were not happy about the incident.
"@DophinBrowser just got an email from [email protected] with hundreds of email addresses and some other hash codes :S," one user wrote.
"Hey @dolphinbrowser you do realize you idiots just sent me the emails of everyone who signed up for the beta of version 6 right?," said another.
The company acknowledged the incident and issued a public apology via its blog. It explained that the incident was the result of a human error caused by a switch in email services.
"Through an unfortunate error by one of our employees, some recipients were able to see the e-mail addresses of others who are also our beta testers. Needless to say, it was never our intention to reveal this information and for that we are genuinely sorry," the company said.
"Those who support our product and give us valuable feedback expect and deserve to have their personal information protected. In this case, we failed to do so and we will ensure it will not happen again in the future," it added.
As for the hash codes that accompanied the email addresses, the company described them as "random keys." It didn't clarify what their purpose is, but noted that they have nothing to do with user account information.
Emailing errors are not a rare occurrence and have happened to larger companies. Back in December, a Telstra employee accidentally exposed the personal details of 570 customers by sending them to the wrong mailing list.
In November, a Seton Hall University employee sent an Excel spreadsheet containing the personal and educational information of 1,500 seniors to 400 other students.
Finally, in January, former Apprentice candidate Alex Epstein exposed the email addresses of hundreds of journalists, editors and other media representatives in UK after failing to use BCC when sending a job seeking email.