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Lacey water bill email mistakenly includes 1,500 email addresses
Aug 15, 2011 (The Olympian - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
When the City of Lacey sent out an email last week promoting its paperless service for paying water bills, recipients also inadvertently received the email addresses of about 1,500 customers.
The utility billing department sent the email Thursday but failed to hide the addresses before sending the message, said finance director Troy Woo. No other sensitive information was released, he added.
"Our intent was good, we just had a simple mistake," Woo said.
The mistake didn't go unnoticed. By the end of the day Friday, the city had received about 50 calls or emails regarding the mistake, a majority of which were negative, Woo said.
The message was intended to go out to 4,000 customers but the city's email system stopped the process after determining the list was too long. The city attempted to recall the message once workers recognized the error but didn't have much luck and some saw it as the city trying to hide the mistake, Woo said.
Another email was sent out later in the day apologizing for the message that contained the addresses.
The city is now working on reaching the remaining 2,500 customers who didn't receive the message about the e-statement program.
Lacey recently changed all of its water customers to a monthly cycle, producing about $17,000 in extra costs. The e-statement program is a way for the city to help recoup those costs and reduce paper usage, Woo said.
To see more of The Olympian, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.theolympian.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information
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(MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com.
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