TIFU by Sending a Confidential Email to the Entire Company

Submitted by CriticalCrit t3_10weuyu in tifu

Hello everyone, I hope you're all doing well today. I'm here to share a story that I hope will make you laugh, even though it was a total disaster for me.

I work as a marketing coordinator for a tech company, and I was tasked with sending out a confidential email to a small group of executives about an upcoming product launch. I was so focused on making sure the email was perfect that I didn't realize until it was too late that I had sent it to the ENTIRE company instead of just the intended recipients.

The email contained sensitive information about the product, including launch dates, marketing strategies, and budget. It was meant to be seen only by a small group of people, and now everyone in the company had access to it.

I was mortified. I immediately called my boss to tell her what had happened, and she was understandably upset. I could feel the panic rising in my chest as I tried to explain what had happened, but there was nothing I could do to undo the damage.

I spent the rest of the day in a state of total embarrassment, and I was sure that everyone in the company was talking about me and my mistake. I was even more mortified when I found out that one of my colleagues had taken a screenshot of the email and shared it on Slack, where it was now being seen by even more people.

I can't even begin to describe the embarrassment and shame I felt. I felt like I had TIFU in the worst possible way and that my mistake would follow me for the rest of my career.

But surprisingly, my colleagues and boss were understanding and forgiving. They told me that everyone makes mistakes, and that this was just a small bump in the road. I was relieved and grateful for their support, but I still felt like I had a long way to go to regain their trust.

TLDR: I send a confidential email to the entire company instead of just the intended recipients, causing feelings of embarrassment and shame. Despite initial panic, my colleagues and boss are understanding and forgiving.

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AcrobaticSource3 t1_j7mohmn wrote

At least you didn’t send the confidential email to a competing company!

190

thiagopepper t1_j7mquaj wrote

Could be worse. You could have sent dick pics like the dude from another TIFU a few weeks back did to his company

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emetphronesis t1_j7mrfxo wrote

A tip - dont include any recipients until you complete your email, this way you will avoid sending incomplete emails and the last thing you do is adding recipient so you will be sure whom it is addressed to

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fwork_ t1_j7muk1c wrote

Replying to emetphronesis (#1,748,209)

Small trick my ex manager thought me: always type some rubbish in the To field until you are ready to send, outlook will give you that little warning message to fix the recipients list so you can't send the email accidentally

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Totobiii t1_j7mw4hk wrote

How does that even happen? I wouldn't even know HOW to adress everybody in my company, are people really just regularly sending mails out to literally everyone?

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HarryHacker42 t1_j7my1az wrote

Apple does this with every Iphone and they're successful, this shouldn't be a bad thing.

Apple keeps "losing" an iphone in San Francisco where a tech-writer just happens to find it and write an article about it.

Take it easy, tell them you're the future Steve Jobs.

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rtosser t1_j7mynkt wrote

Replying to Totobiii (#1,748,520)

This used to be a problem at my old job. Not because they needed to send shit to everyone but because they could and people are lazy. We eventually locked down the distros so regular people couldn't spam the whole firm.

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nailgun198 t1_j7n1abp wrote

Congratulations for executing everyone's worst fear. I can't imagine! I hope everything winds up okay.

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ASubtleName t1_j7n1hn3 wrote

My dude I forwarded an email with my name, date of birth, ssn to a totally different company before

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GuiltyOne85 t1_j7n7b5z wrote

Ouch!! At least you're manager was nice and understanding and forgiving!!!

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gurgenshnoga1 t1_j7n85hl wrote

Haha this is so funny! I think my husband works somewhere under the same parent company as you cuz he heard about this 🤣

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zilnosnibor t1_j7nk31f wrote

Too bad no one knew how to recall the email. I know there's a way but I don't know how. Hopefully the AH coworker was let go. Your's was an internal error, their's was done purposely.

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-steakmittens- t1_j7no876 wrote

Don't know if this would've helped in your situation, but I learned from someone how to set a rule in Outlook (not sure about other emails) so that all emails are held in the Outbox for 1 minute (or more). Gives you a small window to cancel if you have an 'oh shit' moment, has saved my bacon more than a few times!

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p-graphic79 t1_j7nsrnf wrote

I did that one time, it wasnt major. I just hit reply all to the whole company wide email about taking the sexual harassment training saying I finished it. Was just supposed to tell HR.

Well everyone all day long kept telling me congrats and telling me way to go etc. Pretty funny.

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rbnhd_f t1_j7nt02b wrote

Replying to rtosser (#1,748,684)

I consulted at a medium-size company (few thousand users) that had to do this because people we spamming the list to sell their Tupperware or other MLM schemes.

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cupatu292 t1_j7ntdls wrote

If it makes you feel better…my old boss sent a contractor’s W-9 (paperwork with this dude’s name, address, social security number, and signature) out to a few hundred people on his email list. He meant to attach a different pdf.

Amazingly he didn’t get fired after that - he already had two strikes on his record and I was shocked this wasn’t number 3.

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plasmadood t1_j7nvfvb wrote

Good news is that they're probably more worried about the guy that leaked it into Slack than your honest mistake that you willingly fessed up to.

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Kcirnek_ t1_j7ny3qs wrote

I set up a rule so that my emails will always send out 1 minute late. Also why didn't you try to Recall your email?

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MajestaHazel t1_j7ny3zc wrote

How do you accidentally type “all” and select the correct group rather than typing in the correct exec group?

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Saberise t1_j7nzagr wrote

I used to work for an elderly doctor that had zero computer know how. So I would print his emails and he would write out his replies. I was supposed to forward an email to someone else with a few comments. After I hit send I realize it hadn’t prompt me for a recipient. Looked with dread and sure enough I had replied to the sender instead. Luckily the comments weren’t that bad so my boss was even teasing me the next day.

Ever since them I’ve used a 2 minute delay rule for outgoing emails except if I put my initials with / between them and than it had no delay. Anything important I can double check if I have concerns such as if I have the right person or for those times I forget an attachment.

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mmohaje t1_j7o21qg wrote

I can understand and appreciate the embarrassment. But seriously, in situations likes this, just remind yourself, no one died. You're not a surgeon who lost a patient. I've seen some SERIOUS blunders with terrible financial ramifications but all these things at some point just become a story that's told with no person attached to it. But the most important thing for this to hold true, is to take responsibility....you'd be surprised how forgiving people are when you say I messed up, I'm sorry, how can I fix it. It's the ones who mess up and then create so much drama blaming others and deflecting that tank their reputations and are talked about for years.

I also use this 'tool' when trying to assess how much emotional energy/embarrassment/stress I should attribute to an incident. I ask myself will this matter in 10 mins, 10 hours, 10 days, 10 months, 10 years. That usually quickly puts things into perspective for me.

Sounds like it all worked out your way. Well done realizing your mistake and immediately escalating.

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Embarrassed_B_23 t1_j7o73ve wrote

Replying to Totobiii (#1,748,520)

List serve names. You mean to send to

  • “VP1, VP2, VP3, VP4, and CEO instead you send to “VP1-org, VP2, VP3, VP4, and CEO”

Or in this case,

-“VP1, VP2, VP3, VP4, and CEO-org”

Every time I type in my director’s name or anyone senior, I get their email and a few org-level listserve to click.

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Pastafarian_Pirate t1_j7o86ap wrote

One of the administrators at my university accidentally emailed us our entire class rankings for how we were selected for the program.

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UrbanRedFox t1_j7o94in wrote

At least it didn’t create a Don’t Reply To All chain monster

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rbnhd_f t1_j7o9evy wrote

Replying to Wzup (#1,751,098)

It’s just a joke about shitty corporate email. Though some people at companies without email culture advocate for chat-only, e.g. Slack. I couldn’t personally say.

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AdventurousBench6 t1_j7oaewf wrote

Replying to rbnhd_f (#1,751,301)

How would a company run on just chat services? How would you keep threads about specific topics from getting lost or be able to refer or forward the email as an attachment as proof that the conversation happened?

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Archelon_ischyros t1_j7oajik wrote

Yes, you made a mistake. But the colleague that shared the screenshot on Slack is an asshole.

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AdventurousBench6 t1_j7oakx3 wrote

Replying to Totobiii (#1,748,520)

Lol, so we have a distribution list that goes to literally every single employee in our department.

We had an employee go off the rails and absolutely shit talk everyone in an email sent to that distribution list. Then, she announced her resignation to the entire department.

She's the reason why only certain people are able to email that distribution list now...

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rbnhd_f t1_j7ob777 wrote

Replying to AdventurousBench6 (#1,751,344)

I’m sure you could find a bunch of info online if you’re actually curious. I’m not sure if you’re actually curious, or just trying to dunk? Happy to engage if the former.

As I said, I don’t personally have experience with it, because I’m not at such a company, but from what I understand it’s pretty common these days for small companies. I have some friends in tech companies who use chat almost exclusively. I’ve also heard a lot of companies say that their company runs on Slack.

Obviously, there are certain things, certain roles, and certain companies that are better with email. I’m sure there are some email things I would miss, but it’s pretty undeniable that many companies run mostly on chat.

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AdventurousBench6 t1_j7obp6d wrote

Replying to rbnhd_f (#1,751,384)

I really am legitimately curious. I work in HR, so a chat-only communication method blows my mind. I regularly have to keep conversations flagged to refer to later. I forward emails for approval all the time. I use the Print to PDF function to have a pdf copy of resignation letters. My work world revolves around my email. So I guess that's why, to me, it's such an insane concept.

We print out emails for our communications binder for easy access because we need to be able to refer to everything.

I use Outlook for work (and unpopular opinion is that I love Outlook), but I can't imagine solely relying on Teams to talk to people.

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rbnhd_f t1_j7ochzu wrote

Replying to AdventurousBench6 (#1,751,410)

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of anyone who just uses Teams, but I’m sure there are some. I’ve heard a lot of people only use Slack, and I’ve heard from some Meta people that they have their own internal chat, not sure what it is.

I’m at one of the mostly-email companies, though culture seems to be shifting to chat for more things, depending on who you work with.

I think for HR people, it probably wouldn’t work well for anything official. And if you aren’t at a company that already has chat culture (and the tools for it), then it’s a non-starter. But I bet that at the right company, even in HR, you could move a lot of non-critical email into chat.

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MrWrock t1_j7ocjoi wrote

Replying to AdventurousBench6 (#1,751,410)

Messages on slack can become threads if you choose to reply in a thread instead of a channel, so you can have a channel with only top level comments and all discussion in a thread. Everything is just as archivable and searchable as any email client I've used, even more so because I can use the channels as additional search criteria.

I get emails for calendar invites and git notifications, both of which have slack integration. Other than for password recovery and account creation have very little use for email

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Gnemlock t1_j7od3hk wrote

"There was nothing I could do"..

Incorrect. Most people make this assumption. But IT can sometimes recall it for you.

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Bright-Assumption658 t1_j7ohd7o wrote

Another tip (and only because I FU big time before!) is that you can actually delay the send by 30 seconds or a minute so when you hit ‘send’ it stays in your outbox for a while. It’s somewhere in outlook settings

That’s saved me so much in my ‘oh shi*t’ moments and I’ve had a lot of those!

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VisualNoiz t1_j7olaku wrote

and why didn't you call the head of IT to have them remove the unread email from inboxes?

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salt_yaf t1_j7onu80 wrote

Don’t worry about it too much OP. Like others have said it’s only internal. I’ve had worse, the head of legal in my reason OUT my source of info when he gave me the heads up on some non-compliance shit went down.

I asked him why, he said it was a mistake bc he was undulated with emails at q’s end. But that didn’t stop him from flipping out on me and asking why I was interrogating him. I explained that the issue was I was more concerned about the colleague who passed the info onto me, and how he could be ostracized by the rest of sales and marketing.

GC later came to his senses and apologized to me. But it wasn’t about me, it’s about the ethical guy who shared intel and could potentially be hated by the rest of the company.

Hope the fallout from your case is minimal. Corporate espionage is common, don’t beat yourself up because it’s likely been leaked to competitors via ex-colleagues.

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5kyl3r t1_j7oo8re wrote

> PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS LIST

>> i think this was sent to the wrong dist. list

>>> STOP REPLYING TO THESE EMAILS!!!

>>> this doesn't pertain to me; please remove me

>>>> why am i getting this? i didn't join this list

>>>>> EVERYONE STOP REPLYING TO THIS CHAIN!!!!

>>>>>> the people replying to it saying not to reply are also adding to the problem....

>>>>>>> exchange team please make this stop, my inbox is going to explode

>>>>>>>> HI WHAT IS THIS ABOUT???

>>>>>>>>> unsubscribe

>>>>>>>>>> GOD PLEASE STOP REPLYING TO THESE EMAILS OR AT LEAST STOP HITTING "REPLY ALL"

.......

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Small-Teaching1607 t1_j7opse1 wrote

I worked in a very conservative industry back then and I was very junior and prone to mistakes. If you are sending confidential emails, send it to yourself first. That way, you can also capture any formatting mistakes that might appear differently once someone receives the email, or any mistakes in general. Once you are happy with the email, remove the to: and info on top and your signature if any, and send it to people the email is intended to. A lot more work but I used to do this for very confidential emails, or emails that are super important and will be scrutinised all over.

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Gwanip t1_j7ovx98 wrote

Replying to bluebook21 (#1,751,201)

Yes I add an & sign in the to or cc fields so if I press send it doesn’t send. Also really good to store draft emails in my job role when I have to send out status reports

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s_decoy t1_j7owkyx wrote

I did something similar once and accidentally got a coworker fired because of it... I had to send a write up of an incident where one of my cashiers yelled at a little kid in our store to the HR manager, because the kid's parents were rightfully very upset. I was not familiar with the email address book on our computers, there were multiple categories with the same addresses so I just sent it off to "Human Resources"... I come back from my day off to find that I sent that email to the ENTIRE HR department, and when so many people saw this incident, there was a lot of pressure on the store manager to fire her immediately. Though it was on accident, everyone working there was sort of relieved - she was rude, racist, and generally a pain in the ass anyway.

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sleepy-tired t1_j7oysaa wrote

Replying to Totobiii (#1,748,520)

Yes, it’s normal. At my old work there was an “all” mailing list that went to everyone at the company. Sometimes when HR would send out the menu for the Christmas party people would accidentally reply to all so everyone see that they were ordering pate, roast Turkey and chocolate mousse. They would then be asked about food constantly for a week, in typical sarcastic UK fashion.

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eyl569 t1_j7p0j7h wrote

Replying to Totobiii (#1,748,520)

The really annoying thing is when it cascades.

We've occasionally had incidents where someone accidentally sent a company-wide email, presumably because they chose the wrong distribution list. This is inevitably followed by people replying that he made a mistake; except they use Reply All so the entire company gets those. This tends to be followed by people telling them to stop responding - again, company-wide.

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madrantings t1_j7p2j9x wrote

As the supply chain person in an organization that doesn’t hear about promotions for products I buy until 3 months after the promotions launch, I would have thought this email is a godsend. I would make sure what you are saying for dates are actually hit.

Went into a company wide meeting once where the sales team was chanting motors, motors, motors. We had not bought extra motors and a global chip shortage had just started. They had added motors to the sales teams bonus goals. It was a long year.

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Jassida t1_j7p8bls wrote

I’d have asked the email to go no further and fuck the slack guy. Hope they fuck up and suffer

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loki_popofmischief t1_j7pvkt4 wrote

One time our HR rep sent out the entire company's roster of employee names, personal information, salary etc. It was immediately followed by a "please disregard and delete the previous email", but by that time the damage was done.

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Hutobega t1_j7pyowe wrote

Its internal no one gives a flying toot. If they make that into a big deal say" well I didn't send it externally and if anyone does they should be held accountable not me".

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magikspl t1_j7q4hy4 wrote

You could have recalled the message if this was outlook and those who hadn't opened it wouldn't have seen it. You probably noticed you sent it to all right away and could have recalled it quickly.

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super9mega t1_j7q9jmq wrote

My hr person send everyone's SSN to every employee on the 401k plan, so that was fun

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superdooperdutch t1_j7qdl3j wrote

Replying to UKS1977 (#1,752,281)

omg this happens with my company sometimes and there's at least a dozen people in my org that will send the same damn email.

"I shouldn't have been included in this email" over and over again with others saying "stop replying all!"

I think one time it happened we got spammed with about 30 emails from various idiots.

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WYLDPUSS t1_j7qdsu1 wrote

Oops wrong post, have to say, I am real glad it worked out well for you, everyone makes mistakes to a more or lesser degree, don't be so hard on yourself.

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nukesrb t1_j7rwc9p wrote

Replying to Stigma47 (#1,750,218)

I had a colleague accidentally email a customer the results of some medical test he'd undergone instead of a report. Recall didn't work.

I think this only works if both sides are on exchange, with outlook connecting directly to exchange, it's enabled on both sides and there are no mail servers in between. Otherwise it doesn't seem to work, even when you're using O365 as the client. You just get an email saying 'name would like to recall the message'

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Gwanip t1_j7ryp8t wrote

Replying to nukesrb (#1,757,445)

It's not a bug. I only ever use with the Outlook client so haven't tested with similar apps. I have been in my line of business of 18 years and it works for me so am not going to change now and cause a crap storm like the op.

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nukesrb t1_j7se9zk wrote

Replying to Gwanip (#1,757,624)

I think I misinterpreted your comment tbf, I read it as `I insert a random & somewhere in the cc field` rather than `I put a sole ampersand as the content of the cc field`.

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