Sonos accidentally exposes the email addresses of hundreds of customers in email blunder
In total some 450 email addresses were inadvertently exposed when they were copied, rather than blind copied, into an email
The start of this year keeps going from bad to worse for speaker-maker Sonos.
After causing widespread upset when it announced it would stop issuing software updates for its older devices from May – for which it has since apologised and reassured customers their speakers won’t be bricked after this date – it has had to say sorry again after it accidentally leaked hundreds of customer email addresses.
A Sonos employee had been emailing customers who had complained about the initial decision to give them an update and clarify a few points but instead of putting all the emails in BCC, they were CC’d meaning that every customer who received the email could see the personal addresses of everyone else on the list.
In total, some 450 email addresses were inadvertently exposed.
A Sonos spokesperson said: “Earlier today, an email was sent in response to a number of customer inquiries that included email addresses. No further information was included. We have apologised to each customer affected by this error and have put in place processes to ensure this will not happen again.”
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Under GDPR regulations, if the personal details of residents in the UK and EU, held by a company, are improperly used – whether deliberately or accidentally – then it constitutes a potential breach and is subject to fines by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). We have contacted ICO for clarification and will update this story when we hear back.
2020 has not started off well for Sonos.
In December it launched a recycling scheme that offered customers a 30% discount on new products if they followed certain steps to recycle their old ones – not an unusual scheme.
However, the company added that once the old speakers were recycled, it would be permanently deactivated. This raised concerns about how environmentally friendly the scheme actually was and it may be more beneficial to let people see the devices, or give them away.
Sonos followed this up by announcing that it would stop issuing software updates for its older devices which could have, over time, rendered these speakers useless not to mention potentially at risk of hackers.
This time, the chief executive Patrick Spence issued an apology and reassured customers that their expensive devices would not be “bricked” when the software updates ended in May.