Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Both of us here at Disappeared News headquarters got email spam this morning indicating that we have cancelled our New York Times home delivery subscriptions. A snip:

Our records indicate that you recently requested to cancel your home delivery subscription. Please keep in mind when your delivery service ends, you will no longer have unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps.

So someone either has obtained the NY Times email database or maybe something is going on over there internally.

A good place to follow this appears to be New York Times Hacked? NYT Users Were Just Spammed About Home Delivery (Business Insider, 12/28/2011).

Update: The NY Times just sent another email, apologizing for their mistake:

Dear New York Times Reader,

You may have received an e-mail today from The New York Times with the subject line “Important information regarding your subscription."

This e-mail was sent by us in error. Please disregard the message. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Sincerely,

The New York Times

It appears, from their explanation, that the email was sent by an employee, not by their usual emailing service. Instead of going to 300 people it went to 8.6 million.

So at this point, pending any further information, it looks like a mistake, not a hack. Since it’s an internal matter, we may or may not ever learn more.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 12/28/2011 10:25:00 AM