New York Times Admits to Mistakenly Spamming Millions

Posted 12/29/2011 at 6:03am | by Pulkit Chandna

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Many people on Wednesday received an email claiming to be from the venerable New York Times. It requested them to reconsider their recent decision to “cancel your home delivery subscription.” But after being contacted by a number of puzzled people regarding the email, the paper said it appeared to be spam. However, as it later turned out, the paper had no idea of what was going on.

“It appears to be spam,” was NYT spokesperson Robert H. Christie’s terse explanation on Twitter for those surprised by the e-mail. He then said that the issue was being investigated. But the paper retracted that explanation once it became clear that the said message wasn’t the handiwork of spammers after all.

Eileen Murphy, another spokesperson for the paper, told GigaOm in an email: “An email was sent earlier today from The New York Times in error. This email should have been sent to a very small number of subscribers [300], but instead was sent to a vast distribution list made up of people who had previously provided their email address to the New York Times. We regret the error.”

She also confirmed that the error occurred at the New York Time’s end, and no third party was to blame for it.