Avid readers of this blog might remember my dealings with a Swedish company named inLife; they deal with retailing products mainly supplied by Apple, and probably cannot tell service from public execution. On Tuesday they sent me an e-mail with the subject "Webbmöte 061114". Here are the contents of said e-mail:

Buggar Ansvarsområden och när sker utbild BS, DR, TL

1. Nya topplistor "Skrivare" "Skärmar" 2. Stämmer priser mot turbo, MA406 3. Reservation för fel 4. Praylista - sidor som saknar layout 5. Henrik. Mailfel...Uppdrag 6. Utbild torsd 08.00 MF, PA, BS, LZ 7. RSYNK/CRON loaded615C/images >> loaded615C_shop/images

-- inLife - Independent Solutions for Life Björn Sundberg Sveavägen 35-37 Stockholm 08-690 09 09 sundberg (at ) inlife.se http://inlife.se

The list of recipients was quite long. Actually, very long enough to make you think inLife haven't done what most people who handle professional send-outs do. Those people always make precautions so that e-mails meant to hit everybody on their address list aren't sent out to everybody at once, in case an accident occurs.

So, what now? One of my e-mail addresses is now out in the wild, spawning more spam than ever. I now have the e-mail address to 2500 of their customers. Or, wait. Those addresses have not been validated in any way. By simply reading said list for a few seconds, I've found explicit spam addresses and names such as "FONT.a .font", "Youve hateBush" and "fxgauoihbp". I've also found e-mail addresses to some very interesting people working against spam.

The company, inLife, has not sent out a public apology, nor a simple apology to their customers, regarding this acute error. In fact, they have not responded at all. Of course, any company with a real sense of service and professionalism would. It's one thing to make a mistake, but another to act like it never happened; for people that's bad, for companies it is unacceptable. By the way, their CEO never contacted me despite his "assurance" that the company he works for is "devoted to service".

P.s. I've obfuscated Mr. Sundberg's e-mail address in his automatic signature, to save him from spam.