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Original poster

Premium 'Recently Registered' email

19 replies

SantasBritchesSpelleas · 24/12/2020 20:29

I had an email advertising Premium saying 'We noticed you recently registered with Mumsnet'. I registered several years ago! Is this an error or is it like moving into a small village where you're still considered an incomer 20 years later?

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MNHQ

EstherMumsnet · 24/12/2020 21:53

Hello, thanks for flagging this. This email was meant to go out to people who had registered in the last few days but due to a human error it went out to a much larger segment of email addresses on our database. The issue has been fixed now. Many apologies, we know many of you have been here years so it must have been a bit of an odd email to get! Apologies again everyone, and Merry Christmas.

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 26/12/2020 19:50

Thanks to those who have been in touch already. We've put a fix in place and no further emails are being sent out.
If you're one of the people reporting that the email was sent to an old address, please could you forward it to us so that we can double check things at our end. (Please send it to [email protected]).
Apologies once again for the Christmas confusion.

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 27/12/2020 10:26

Hi all, and thanks for bearing with us whilst we investigated.

While this email certainly shouldn't have gone out to everyone who ended up receiving it, this send doesn't constitute a data breach. Anyone who has sent a deregister request to MN is automatically placed on our 'unsubscribe' list which means we can't contact them with marketing messages and they wouldn't have received this email.

The email was sent to some users who have been previously banned - this was completely unintentional and we're putting in measures to prevent them being contacted again.

As per our message last night, if we have contacted you on an 'old' email address please do forward the email you received (to contactus@) and we will remove it from our email system asap.
Thanks again.
MNHQ.

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 28/12/2020 17:53

Hello, and thanks for bearing with us while we’ve taken a thorough look at this.

We mistakenly sent an email that was part of our welcome journey for new members, to our full database of emails - apologies again for that.

Having investigated we are confident that we are not holding emails for users who have deregistered or unsubscribed - but if users change their email addresses the old one isn’t automatically removed from our master email list, which is why on Xmas eve, you might have received a mail for an account that you no longer use for Mumsnet.
We’ll make sure that in future old emails are automatically removed from the list when users update their details.

Please let us know if you have any further concerns and we’ll be happy to check your permission details to make sure everything is as you want it (for example, it’s quite common for people to unsubscribe from an email, thinking they’ve unsubscribed from all emails, when in fact they’ve only unsubscribed from the one they are currently reading).

Apologies once again for any upset.
MNHQ

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 29/12/2020 13:02

@Lucylaine We're very keen to investigate this - but we can't without knowing more details. Please could you email us either the address of the old account, or a previous username so we can check what's happened here. Thanks in advance,
MNHQ

MNHQ

soniamumsnet · 30/12/2020 13:52

Hi all

@lucylaine - We tested our de-registration process this morning and can confirm it's working. If you are sure you de-registered and still got an email we'd love to investigate it, but would need your email address to do so.

@TinselAngel We are happy to delete email addresses that have previously been changed retrospectively, but we do need the owners of the email addresses to mail in the details of the old account so we know who to remove.

@Nnkk These are one click links that connect to a form that flags that you don't want to receive any more 'general' emails from mn (e.g about upcoming zoomchats). If you opt out of general emails we won't send you any mails - including premium ones. But there are some people who may be interested in general emails about zoomchats and the like who specifically don't want to hear about premium, so we give two options. In terms of the page just giving the message 'thanks for submitting the form' - this is the default landing page from the email service provider, we agree it's not a great customer experience so we'll look into improving this and making it much more user friendly'.

MNHQ

soniamumsnet · 30/12/2020 14:14

@Nnkk no problem. Flowers

MNHQ

LilyMumsnet · 30/12/2020 17:46

@R0wantrees

We are happy to delete email addresses that have previously been changed retrospectively, but we do need the owners of the email addresses to mail in the details of the old account so we know who to remove.

@soniamumsnet What is the rationale for keeping redundant emails on file? Many women changed their emails in response to the previous data breaches and as I have demonstrated, members were given to believe they already had assurances this data (often identifying) would not be held on your database.

Why are you holding this data, especially when Mumsnet claims to have a duty of care and be aware of women's need for privacy?

Hello,

When a user changes email address, it's deleted from their user account. We do need to keep track of changes made to user accounts to prevent abuse, and the details of any email changes are stored in our database in case someone tries to move someone else's account to a different email address and we then need to investigate.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 07/01/2021 16:23

Hello everyone - and thanks for your questions. I've taken some time this week to go through everything on this thread and dig into all the nooks and crannies - so apologies for the delayed response.

Back in April, I explained on this thread that while we’ve certainly had our fair share of security incidents, the suggestion that we’re cavalier with users’ data is, I believe, untrue and unfair - we’ve always been transparent and upfront about any data breaches, however small and inconsequential (unlike many orgs who routinely swept things under the carpet). Please take a look at my post on that thread as I hope it will provide some reassurance.

However, it’s also fair to say that we have not been following what we understand to be best practise wrt to the removal of old email addresses from our email system when users change (as oppose to delete) their email - we should have been removing the old emails from our mailing list, not just changing them on our site database and that indeed was an oversight on our part. We have now fixed this and I apologise for any concern caused.

It remains the case that we are always more than happy to manually remove any email from our list, so please do contact us if you have any concerns at all. And please be assured that de-registration is and has been working as it should - if you deregister your account it removes all details you provided at registration, including your email address, from our data-base and all our mailing lists.

Thanks again for raising this - it is always helpful and we're always happy to answer questions about how and why we store your data.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 07/01/2021 18:49

@MeMarmiteYouJam

So you haven't broken any GDPR laws, then?

(I'll just ignore the appeals to emotion in your statements, as they are inconsequential and have no bearing on the facts of the matter)

No I don't believe we have broken GDPR rules as such (this is a bit of a niche case and it isn't explicitly covered) but as said, I also believe that we weren't following best practice. There was no deliberate attempt to hold onto and use old email addresses - we delete those old emails from our user database and up to now marked them "do not send to" on our master email list, rather than removing them. And on Christmas Eve, as you know, we mistakenly sent a mail to that master list instead of to the new joiners list. I believe that best practice would be to remove old emails from the master email list instead of marking them as "do not send to this mail". Had we done that then the human error made on Christmas eve wouldn't have resulted to us contacting old emails iyswim. So, in short, I don't believe we've broken any GDPR rules but we can do better and hence have changed the way manage these lists now as we always aim to follow best practice in how we look after personal data. Thank you to everyone on this thread who brought this to our attention.
MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 07/01/2021 19:50

[quote DumplingsAndStew]@JustineMumsnet Can you confirm why you chose to hang on to these email addresses in a hidden database, rather than delete them as you should?[/quote]
Yes it was an oversight. This system was set up well before GDPR came in and this niche event was just missed - we would never have known about it if we hadn't made the error wrt sending a mail to the wrong list. I do believe the key thing is that there was no intention to hold or misuse data to our benefit. As said it wasn't best practice and our intention is always to employ best practice so we're grateful that it's been raised and we've been able to correct it.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 07/01/2021 19:51

@R0wantrees

Please let us know if you have any further concerns and we’ll be happy to check your permission details to make sure everything is as you want it

@JustineMumsnet
Thank you for responding to some of the issues which have been raised.
I sent an email to contactus@ mumsnet on 27/12/2020 (the day before Michael Mumsnet posted the encouraging words above). It has not been acknowledged.

I'll as the community team to look into this and respond R0wantrees.
MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 07/01/2021 20:23

There was no good reason to hold old email addresses in our email platform database - as said it was an oversight and it was unintentional. We certainly had no intention of ever using those emails - that's why they were marked as to 'not to use' and were deleted from the Mumsnet platform database. It was only when We made the human error off sending a newsletter to the to you the whole email database That we realised that these old email addresses were not being deleted from our email platform database at the same time as they were being Deleted from our own database. It's a system that would've been set up well before GDPR came in. Ideally we should have clocked it earlier but as a niche case I can understand why it was overlooked. And I'm pretty sure I'm the person, as CEO, who's overall responsible for Mumsnet's GDPR compliance.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 08/01/2021 10:13

@TheShadowyFeminist

I think it would be more reasonable to send an email to all those on this 'do not use' list that shouldn't have been retained to confirm that this email is still on your database so they're all aware & can respond to confirm the data should be removed. This should not be left to individual members & ex members to contact MN to ensure action is taken.
Yes I completely agree. We'll mail everyone on our email database who isn't currently opted in to any newsletters to ask them if they'd like to be removed altogether. Thanks
MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 14/01/2021 09:39

[quote DumplingsAndStew]@JustineMumsnet

Yes I completely agree. We'll mail everyone on our email database who isn't currently opted in to any newsletters to ask them if they'd like to be removed altogether. Thanks

Hi, Did you send out that email yet? I've not received anything.[/quote]
Hiya this should be going out today or tomorrow. Thanks

MNHQ

AmyGMumsnet · 18/01/2021 14:22

Hi @AaronPurr and @LemonRedwood

These have been sent out now, if you've not received one could you send an email to [email protected] and we'll take a look for you. Thanks!

MNHQ

AmyGMumsnet · 21/01/2021 10:26

Hi @Thelnebriati - unsubscribing removes users from the list of people we're able to send newsletters to.

If anyone wants their email address completely removed from the system please do mail in and we will action asap. Thanks!

MNHQ

AmyGMumsnet · 22/01/2021 08:24

Hello

We can see how it might feel that we’re asking people to jump through pointless hoops. We really don’t want to hang on to anyone’s email addresses longer than we need to. The rationale for holding them is this: anyone who has unsubscribed goes onto a master unsubscribe list. This physically prevents any emails being sent to those addresses (so no one can accidentally send a mail to someone who’s said they don’t want one - the system auto-rejects it and it physically can’t go out). This is considered good practice by our email provider and the ICO. If anyone would prefer their email not to be on a master unsubscribe list, though, we are of course very happy to remove it altogether.

As said previously we have been amiss in that we haven’t been automatically deleted the old emails of those who changed email addresses from our email database and unfortunately we can’t identify those old emails (because we don’t store that data anywhere else). Hence why we sent out the mail asking if folks wanted to unsubscribe from our master list.

Hope that makes sense.

MNHQ

AmyGMumsnet · 22/01/2021 13:25

We get that the reasoning behind keeping an email address on an Unsubscribed list, when someone has asked for it to be changed or removed, might sound a bit mad, but it’s what the ICO strongly recommends. They say ‘As soon as someone objects to or opts out of your marketing, you should add them to a ‘do not contact’ list. You should screen all your marketing against this list to make sure you don’t contact anyone who has opted out… You must not simply delete their details altogether, as you need to ensure they are not later put back on your marketing list by mistake.’

Keeping an Unsubscribed list is a failsafe mechanism to ensure that those email addresses are never mistakenly re-added or contacted. (We did not send the Christmas Eve email to our Unsubscribed list, for example, because our email provider simply will not allow any emails to go to those addresses.)

As we said upthread, we completely agree that those who've asked for their emails to be changed shouldn't have their old email retained anywhere in the active mailing list in our email provider. That's what the mails we sent aimed to rectify. If you think that applies to you, you can respond to that email by hitting Unsubscribe (which will move you to our Unsubscribe list). However, if you're absolutely sure you want to be manually removed from our Unsubscribed list too, email us on [email protected] and we'll action it for you.

All that said, we are looking at auto-deleting these 'old' emails from the Unsubscribe list at a certain point in time - our email provider suggests 18 months after they are added.

Two things to note, finally:

None of these 'old' emails can in any way be linked to any Mumsnet user account - there is absolutely nothing in our email provider database giving any information about which Mumsnet user account they were previously associated with.

And secondly, we will always hold an email address for anyone who has a Mumsnet user account. This is held in our user database (which is separate from our email provider) and is a part of your log-in information. There's no way to have a Mumsnet user account without your email address being in our user database. That address is used for sending notifications (for example if you have asked to Watch a thread), for responding to you if you ever hit the 'report' button, and, very occasionally, to send urgent emails to every user - for example if we need to force a password reset.

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