Metro Bank – School boy error for new kid on the block
Metro Bank, the newly established UK retail bank, has irked its customers with a schoolboy email error.
The latest marketing missive from the bank was sent using all the email addresses in to To: field instead of using the bcc (blind carbon copy) field. In the process, the bank disclosed the email addresses of around 1,200 customers to each other. The email, sent on Friday, told customers their monthly bank statement for May was ready as well as mentioning what one customer described as a “back-slapping” commentary about improvements Metro Bank is making to its internet banking service.
The next email was a fruitless “recall” request, followed shortly afterwards by an apology email from the bank’s managing director, Paul Marriott-Clarke (extract below).
“We are aware that we have made a small internal administrative error leading to us sending a generic email to a small number of customers who can see the email addresses of the other individuals included on the email.
Rest assured there is no need for any concern as no other information was sent. We have changed our processes so that this does not happen again.
Please accept our sincere apologies for our error.”
Several Reg readers wrote to inform us about the snafu. The mess-up is hardly a big deal and it seems very unlikely that any harm (extra spam and phishing emails) will result. Nonetheless customers of the bank have every right to hold it to a higher standard of internet security awareness because they are entrusting the newly established bank with their money. In that respect they have been let down. Some feel that the apology does not go far enough and that some offer of compensation or, at the very least, advice against been wary against subsequent phishing emails might be in order.
“I remember Domino’s Pizza did something similar about 10 years back – everyone got £50 of vouchers and a humble apology,” said Reg reader Adam, who was the first to warn us about the story. “My bank do it, and they pretend its not a big deal. How times have changed.”
Metro Bank opened last year as Britain’s first new High Street bank in over 100 years. It has four branches within the M25 corridor, all of which are open seven days a week.