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The Guardian Just Accidentally Exposed the Email Addresses of 501 App Beta Testers

A review is now underway to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Image: Nicholas Deleon

The Guardian was forced to apologize this morning after it inadvertently exposed the email addresses of 501 people (including myself) who volunteered to beta test an upcoming version of the publication's iOS app.

The email addresses were located in the "to" field of the email announcing the beta test instead of the more appropriate "BCC" field, which would have hidden the email address from the recipients.

Image: Nicholas Deleon

The Guardian, which has now offered to remove the would-be participants' "details" from the program entirely, apologized about one hour after the first email, which was sent at 7:23 AM ET on Monday morning.

"We will be reviewing the process for sending out these kinds of emails to ensure that this doesn't happen again," The Guardian wrote in the apology email. "Once again we would like to offer sincerest apologies for any inconvenience caused."

Update, 12:05pm ET: Following an earlier request for comment, The Guardian tell Motherboard that the 501 people whose email addresses were accidentally exposed represents only a "subsection" of the total number of people who volunteered for the beta test. The publication reiterated that it will remove anyone from the beta program upon request, and that it's "reviewing [its] process" for sending these emails in the future.