Comment by kortilla

4 years ago

Jump to conclusion and shame. Classic.

How about, just maybe, they use a mail list management system like millions of other companies and PII wasn’t available in tests at all?

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kortilla

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bogomipz  4 years ago

Except they also sent emails to people who are not subscribers such as myself and there was no unsubscribe link in the email. There was also no header, footer or any branding at all in the email. The only content in the email was the single line of text that read:

"template is used by integration tests only."

None of that sounds like a mail list management system to me. Also nowhere does the OP appear to "shame" anyone. In fact the OP very clearly states they don't blame any person but that they felt fault lies in lack of process to prevent such incidents.

  • kortilla  4 years ago

    That sounds exactly like what you would send to a mail list management system. Since you’ve likely never used them, think of it like a black box you feed a template that has a bunch of vars you can reference like

    “Dear {firstname},

    Check out our new movie: Batman Undresses.

    Thanks for being a subscriber for {accountlife}.

    {termsfooter} {unsubscribefooter} {alternatelanguagesfooter} “

    The whole point of a template is so you send to an entire distribution list with a single API call and the mail system handles rendering templates to per user emails, setting up the unsubscribe link, tracking pixels, etc.

    > Except they also sent emails to people who are not subscribers

    That has exactly zero relation ship to your name being in their mail distribution system.

    • CRConrad  4 years ago

      > That has exactly zero relation ship to your name being in their mail distribution system.

      Seems it has some relation after all: If your name isn't in the system, you wouldn't receive the result of the template being applied: Somewhere a bit higher in the code than your example, up among the headers, there's a bit like "to:{emailaddress}".

      I mean, what is sending mail to non-subscribers related to, if not the contact data of those non-subscribers being in the sender's mail distribution system?

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