Esrb Apologies For E-Mail Snafu

[Maestro23]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/110/1105865p1.html

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) has apologized for revealing potentially thousands of private gamer e-mail addresses yesterday.

As first reported by WoW.com, thousands of gamers initially concerned with Blizzard forcing its forum members to display his or her real names e-mailed the ESRB to voice their displeasure and to hopefully gain leverage in making Blizzard retract its decision.

However, when Blizzard decided to backtrack on the idea later that week, the ESRB accidentally replied to everyone with the news of Blizzard's move and revealed an undetermined number of private addressed believed to be over a thousand.

"In our effort to respond quickly to the thousands of gamers who wrote to the ESRB, we inadvertently revealed a limited number of recipients' e-mail addresses in our reply," Eliot Mizrachi of the ESRB told IGN. "This was both unfortunate and regrettable, and for that we sincerely apologize to all those who were affected."

Below is the e-mail response sent out earlier today in full:

Yesterday we sent an e-mail to a number of consumers who wrote to us in recent days expressing their concern with respect to Blizzard's Real ID program. Given the large number of messages we received, we decided to respond with a mass e-mail so those who'd written us would receive our response as quickly as possible - rather than responding to each message individually, as is our usual practice.

Through an unfortunate error by one of our employees, some recipients were able to see the e-mail addresses of others who wrote on the same issue. Needless to say, it was never our intention to reveal this information and for that we are genuinely sorry. Those who write to ESRB to express their views expect and deserve to have their contact and personal information protected. In this case, we failed to do so and are doing everything we can to ensure it will not happen again in the future.

The fact that our message addressed individuals' concerns with respect to their privacy underscores how truly disappointing a mistake this was on our part. We work with companies to ensure they are handling people's private information with confidentiality, care and respect. It is only right that we set a good example and do no less ourselves.

We sincerely apologize to those who were affected by this error and appreciate their understanding.

Sincerely,

Entertainment Software Rating Board

[MarkB]

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