Jesus F. Christ…my credit union just sent an email out to all the people who signed up for their online banking service, and they didn’t use the blind-carbon-copy feature of Outlook Express, so it revealed all 155 email addresses for each recipient to see. Luckily for me, when I signed up I created an email address just for spam, and they’re the only ones I’ve given the address to so far. I did it to see if they would end up giving my address to somebody else, but so far this is the only email I’ve gotten at that address since I signed up several months ago. I’m going reply and tell them what a stupid fucking thing they just did, but I doubt they’ll care, or even understand why it was stupid.
Update: Here’s my original email, and a reply sent to my dennis@udink.org account–so obviously the sender intended it to be seen by all my website readers. Otherwise, the reply should have been sent to my spam account:

From: spam@udink.org
To: [address witheld]
Next time you send out an email like the one below, you might think about using Outlook Express’ “blind carbon copy” feature, which allows you to hide the email addresses of the recipients. It’s considered quite a breach of internet privacy when 155 email addresses are sent out for all the recipients to see. If I were a dishonest person, I could easily target all these people with spam (unsolicited email), and I’m willing to bet that a local retailer would pay good money for the email addresses of this many people in the area.
I figured something like this would happen when I signed up for Techie Teller, so I created an email address just for unsolicited email and gave it to you, so I could care less what you do with it, but I’m sure many other recipients of this email would like their privacy protected a little better than this.
Dennis Udink
spam@udink.org

And here’s the reply:

From: Cole Clarke
To: dennis@udink.org
Subject: Did your mommy by [sic] you a computer?
Dearest Dennis,
You are absolutely right…I made a gross error in sending out that email inappropriately and it is clearly against our policy to do so. It was, however, a simple error of oversight, not ignorance. Our efforts will be more carefully considered and no such errors will occur again. And, for your information, we have no intention of giving your or anyone else’s email address to any other party, therefore your creation of an alternative address was a bit of paranoia only justified by the fact that we made a simple logistical error. Perhaps you could show the most minute amount of integrity now by removing the vulgar comments you have placed on your web site. And if I should ever be fortunate enough to receive email from you again make it more respectful, since, by the vulgar content and miscellaneous garbage contained on your site, it is clear that our coinciding levels of dignity, integrity and maturity indicate a great deficit on your part. Would you like it in simpler terms? Grow up little man.
Sincerely Yours,
Cole Clarke
P.S. If you live in Price you should be more cautious when using small town hick in a derogatory manner–I would.

So I guess basically what this guy is saying is that even though he made a “gross error” and I was “justified” in my creation of a different email account, he’s just pissed off about the language I use on my personal website. I fail to see how a credit union employee should be concerned with the “vulgar” language I choose to use anywhere, except maybe on credit union property. If I have mis-stated the truth (which I’m sure I haven’t), that’s one thing, but it’s downright ridiculous for this guy to be telling me what the fuck I should say. The email I sent to him was not disrespectful in the least, I was merely pointing out that they should not be revealing the email addresses of all the recipients, and that in the future they should be more careful.
P.S. Is there a way to use “small town hick” that is not derogatory?