Ikea Singapore apologises after error exposes 410 e-mail addresses
Swedish furniture giant Ikea apologised yesterday for two e-mail gaffes - the first exposing more than 400 e-mail addresses to other customers, and then accidentally sending out an apology that was still in the draft stage.
The first error occurred at 4.57pm last Thursday.
A spokesman said the company had "regretfully made an error" of inserting 410 e-mail addresses in the "To" field in an Ikea Service Delivery Promotion e-mail sent to customers. This made all the e-mail addresses visible to recipients of the mailer.
"In our haste to notify the customers as quickly as possible, we again made a mistake by sending half the recipients an internal draft of the apology notice instead, an oversight that we are embarrassed about," the spokesman said.
Apologising for causing unease and inconvenience, Ikea said it takes customers' personal data integrity seriously, and it had notified the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) when the first error was discovered.
The spokesman added: "Confidence and trust in our company including our data protection policies is important to us and we will look at and implement effective ways to prevent this from happening again, through reviews of procedures, technology and training."
THIRD DATA BREACH
This is the third data breach by retailers in two weeks.
Electricity retailer Geneco is being investigated by the PDPC for a similar error.
Last Monday, international beauty retailer Sephora said it suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of online customers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, New Zealand and Australia.
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