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GeneralRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
Cp-Coder6-Feb-20 11:33
Cp-Coder6-Feb-20 11:33 
GeneralRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
MarkTJohnson6-Feb-20 12:09
professionalMarkTJohnson6-Feb-20 12:09 
GeneralRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
Cp-Coder6-Feb-20 13:14
Cp-Coder6-Feb-20 13:14 
GeneralRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
Super Lloyd6-Feb-20 16:36
Super Lloyd6-Feb-20 16:36 
JokeRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
Daniel Pfeffer6-Feb-20 20:31
professionalDaniel Pfeffer6-Feb-20 20:31 
GeneralRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
dan!sh 6-Feb-20 21:09
professional dan!sh 6-Feb-20 21:09 
GeneralRe: Hate to sound biased, but.... Pin
F-ES Sitecore6-Feb-20 22:39
professionalF-ES Sitecore6-Feb-20 22:39 
GeneralEpic fail in the making? Pin
dandy726-Feb-20 7:46
dandy726-Feb-20 7:46 
Starting last August, a large retail store chain (name withheld to protect the innocent) had been sending me a pay statement (as a password-protected PDF file) as an email attachment to one of my many addresses. I suspect some lady is an employee, and she doesn't have an email address of her own, so she might have provided her husband's to her employer (pure speculation from my part). Only, she didn't quite get the address right, and I've been getting those statements. That particular email address starts with my actual name, so it's absolutely conceivable she's married to someone who shares my name (he's got a much more public profile on the internet than I do--if it is who I think it might be).

I got these emails every 2 weeks for months, and all my "I'm not the intended recipient" messages back went unanswered, until I went out of my way last month to find a contact on the store chain's web site. The emails have stopped. The nice lady was very apologetic and explained to me they have no way to verify that an email address provided by an employee is correct. Personally I didn't mind the error; I don't care and it's easy enough for me to ignore any such email or set up a rule to automatically trash it based on sender.

Lo and behold, I'm thinking my email is also part of a separate list they also maintain, because I just got another email from the same company--sent to a "training@[companyname.com]" alias. This email is telling me that, as part of some upcoming training session, they're going to soon email me my user name and a link, and a follow-up email containing my temporary password.

Since I only ever got a single contact from that company, I dug up her email again and explained that someone in their IT department is planning to send login credentials to an unverified account, and how bad an idea that is.

I'm not a security expert and I don't necessarily know what the best practices are, but if you're going to email login credentials to employees (at a massive scale), shouldn't those emails all stay within your own [companyname.com] domain, and not personal, random Hotmail, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo etc addresses that employees have provided to you?

[Edit]

When I was in high school, I pointed out a computer system flaw to trusted teachers and school administration (I knew the principal and was on good terms with him, being a good student and all), and they actually turned on me and got me in a bit of trouble, which left a very bad taste in my mouth. I'm hoping [big faceless corporation] isn't going to take this the wrong way and sic its lawyers on me. Maybe I should just STFU. I'm just trying to do the right thing.

modified 6-Feb-20 13:55pm.

GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
phil.o6-Feb-20 8:09
professionalphil.o6-Feb-20 8:09 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
honey the codewitch6-Feb-20 8:38
mvahoney the codewitch6-Feb-20 8:38 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
dandy727-Feb-20 3:00
dandy727-Feb-20 3:00 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
honey the codewitch7-Feb-20 6:49
mvahoney the codewitch7-Feb-20 6:49 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
dandy727-Feb-20 7:22
dandy727-Feb-20 7:22 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
honey the codewitch7-Feb-20 7:43
mvahoney the codewitch7-Feb-20 7:43 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
dandy727-Feb-20 10:41
dandy727-Feb-20 10:41 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
honey the codewitch7-Feb-20 10:51
mvahoney the codewitch7-Feb-20 10:51 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
dandy728-Feb-20 3:03
dandy728-Feb-20 3:03 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
jeron16-Feb-20 9:51
jeron16-Feb-20 9:51 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
Jon McKee6-Feb-20 10:28
professionalJon McKee6-Feb-20 10:28 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
dandy727-Feb-20 3:18
dandy727-Feb-20 3:18 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
Rick York6-Feb-20 10:58
mveRick York6-Feb-20 10:58 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
Jörgen Andersson6-Feb-20 18:42
professionalJörgen Andersson6-Feb-20 18:42 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
Mark_Wallace7-Feb-20 0:52
Mark_Wallace7-Feb-20 0:52 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
dandy727-Feb-20 3:07
dandy727-Feb-20 3:07 
GeneralRe: Epic fail in the making? Pin
DRHuff6-Feb-20 11:54
DRHuff6-Feb-20 11:54 

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