Data Protection
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Sonos sorry for exposing hundreds of customer email addresses

An email sent to 450 customers revealed all of their addresses to each other

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Sonos just can't catch a break. The speaker company apologized late this week after an email sent to hundreds of customers mistakenly revealed all of their email addresses to each other.

The email was sent to customers who had contacted Sonos after it announced its older speaker and audio products would no longer receive software updates after May, and will eventually likely lose functionality.

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The announcement was met with anger and confusion from customers who had spent hundreds of even thousands of dollars on fitting Sonos equipment throughout their homes, only to be told it could soon stop working.

In a bid to appease these concerns, Sonos chief executive Patrick Spence wrote a blog post on January 23, apologizing for how the company had acted, and said solutions will be found to try and keep old products working for as long as possible.

But then, on January 30 a Sonos employee sent an email to 450 customers in a bid to further explain the situation. Unfortunately, the customers were copied into the email instead of blind copied, so could all see each other's email addresses.


One of those customers, John Nash, tweeted: "Hi @sonos, thanks for sharing my email address in a CC reply to a few hundred others. What a week you are having."

Sonos later said in a statement: "Earlier today, an email was sent in response to a number of customer inquiries that included email addresses. No further information was included. We have apologized to each customer affected by this error and have put in place processes to ensure this will not happen again."

Sonos could well be fined for this error. Under GDPR law, if a company misuses the personal details of residents from the European Union, it constitutes a data breach and can result in a fine by the Information Commissioner's Office.

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