A $1 Billion Email Gaffe

Jake writes in with the story behind an explosive NYTimes scoop last week. It seems that the Times's pharmaceutical industry reporter, Alex Berenson, scored a page-one blockbuster when he revealed that Eli Lilly was looking to reach a settlement with federal prosecutors over the company's alleged inappropriate marketing of anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa. A settlement figure of $1 billion was mentioned. This scoop dropped into Berenson's inbox when a lawyer for one of Lilly's retained firms mis-addressed an email to a colleague with the same last name as that of the Times reporter. Some online observers are speculating that auto-complete is to blame, but this has not been confirmed.
Update: 02/08 17:19 GMT by KD : Jake writes in with an update: it seems that while Berenson did receive a misdirected e-mail from Pepper Hamilton, that e-mail did not contain a detailed description of the status of the Eli Lilly settlement talks. Berenson got his story from other sources.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[BigJClark]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEBKAC [wikipedia.org]

***Legal Notice*** and I mean it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are not the intended recipient of this response, please disregard and forget this posting.

You are legally binded from reading, forwarding, printing, copying, remembering, discussing or in any other way acknowledging this post.

I am planning on robbing the bank on Fifth and Elm. Do not alert the police. Meet me at the warehouse after.

captcha:overlook

New feature! Auto-complete your career!

[syousef]

Tired of that pesky work getting in the way of having fun? No problems, with our new email auto-complete, work will never be a problem again. Tired of looking competent. Too few opportunties to end your career over a simple typo? Problem solved with auto-complete. People will blame you the dumb user for making the smallest mistake at any time of the day or night and regardless of your workload. With auto-complete your career is guaranteed to end in the jiffiest of jiffies.

Pine? HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

I telnet to port 25 and type my emails into the server by hand. If I screw up, I have to start over. You pine users have it easy.

Re:This happens to me all the time!

[JazzyMusicMan]

How do you manage to notice emails from the Times and folks sifting through all the offers for a larger penis and requests to temporarily hold funds for nigerian family members

Tell Me About It

[corby]

Dudes, you should see the crazy shit I get.

Signed,
Pritchard Cheney

Re:Very Nasty Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Mr. Cruise...

encryption?

[hardtofindanick]

It's interesting how some people are suggesting using encryption. I wouldn't be surprised to see an email like this; "Dear Eli, attached is the encrypted document. Regards, Your laywer PS: the password is zomg!1billion"

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[yali]

If the info was confidential it probably had a confidentiality notice at the bottom of it, stating that if you are not the intended recipient that you aren't allowed to do anything with the email. I saw one of those sig's today and started to wonder if that was legally binding in any way. Maybe we will find out now!

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that putting a notice at the bottom of a message creates a legally binding contract.

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Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[yali]

Judging from your four-digit ID number, I am going to assume that you wrote that software yourself, so you still owe me. Unless your software passes the Turing test, in which case you are safe but your computer is going to gitmo.

Re:Very Nasty Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent +1 Glib.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[MightyYar]

The unheated cells are the nice ones. The heated ones are in the same wing as the ones with "running water".

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[Viceroy Potatohead]

which means I have to thumb carefully past people I definitely *don't* want to call by accident (but still need to have in my book)

Tell me about it...

[Me autodialling]
Callee: Hello?
Me: Hey baby, it's Thursday. I've got the Tantric oil, buttplug, and Fischer-Price chainsaw ready. When are you heading over?
Callee: Ummm... How's your week going?
Me: Mom?

Every Thursday, like clockwork...

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[jollyreaper]

Tell me about it...

[Me autodialling]
Callee: Hello?
Me: Hey baby, it's Thursday. I've got the Tantric oil, buttplug, and Fischer-Price chainsaw ready. When are you heading over?
Callee: Ummm... How's your week going?
Me: Mom?

Every Thursday, like clockwork...

Let's just hope one of those times she doesn't say "Oh, what the hell, I'll try anything once."

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

[swillden]

AAAL

"Ah ahm a lahyah"

and a southern gentleman too.

I had this happen with a university address, lots

[patio11]

I was the campus token conservative columnist. He was very flamboyantly gay. Our university email addresses were generated off of initials plus, since we had a catastrophic hash collision, one distinguishing digit which people botched quite frequently. He got my death threats, I got his love letters, and neither of us was very happy with the matter.

We both maintained a pretty good sense of humor about it, though. These were typical, with the vile language excised:

FWD: You fascist ... [Ed: I think it is for you]

FWD: I want to ... you [Ed: I think this one is for you]
RE: FWD: I want to ... you [Ed: No, read it more carefully]
RE: RE: FWD: I want to ... you [Ed: Ah, whoops, my apologies]
RE: RE: RE: FWD: I want to ... you [Ed: No problem. Hey, FWIW, I think he was out of line]

Re:WARNING: GNAA

[jbosmans]

And the culprit is (most likely).... timecop [slashdot.org]. Smart enough to post AC, dumb enough to leave his user name in the url :p

Re:What about the disclaimer in the footer?

[Asic Eng]

how legally enforceable are all those disclaimers I get in the footers of e-mails

Actually, they are absolutely watertight. Nothing you can do if you get one of those.

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