Muni Diaries

Rider Nathan D. received an email this morning from Clipper Card customer service that revealed the email address of more than 1,700 other customers. This was an error from a Clipper employee this morning, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission told the San Francisco Chronicle that they are making sure such mistakes don’t happen again. More from Nathan:

This morning I got an email from Clipper telling me that my credit card was about to expire. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this aside from the fact that this same email was sent to 1756 other Clipper customersby simply populating the CC field of the message header, effectively broadcasting a massive list of private addresses to a whole lot of people who have no business knowing them.

Nathan forwarded us the email, which we’ve attached above. The body of the email from Clipper Card customer service simply said:

Dear Clipper Cardholder,

We first would like to thank you for your support of the Clipper (formerly TransLink) program. According to our records, the credit card information we currently have on file for the Autoload on your Clipper Card is due to expire in December. To avoid any disruption of services, simply update your credit card / banking details online at www.clippercard.com by following these steps…

Well, good thing Nathan’s credit card number wasn’t in the email or anything. This certainly doesn’t help matters, knowing that some riders are already wary of potential privacy issues with Clipper cards. The MTC spokesperson said he is drafting an apology, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Did you receive the same email this morning? And how do you protect your email addresses on the internet?