Last week I received an email from Incisive Media regarding a Search Engine Strategies Webinar sponsorship. The email was an advertisement explaining all the great things about sponsoring their webinars and was apparently sent to me and about 520 other recipients. How do I know this? Because they neglected to keep their email list private!

Instead of placing all recipient email addresses as BCC so they remain hidden from each recipient, all 520 were simply CC'd making them publicly viewable to all.

Included in the list were about 35 Google employee email addresses, address from Kanoodle, LookSmart, Microsoft and a large number of my competitors. Many, if not most, of these addresses probably could have been found doing a little research if need be, but at the same time, distributing a list of email contacts like this is just bad, bad, bad!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my list, I guess just keep it for a day I need to make contact with someone at one of these companies. But if you remember receiving the same email and want to prevent your contact information from being distributed freely, according to the email you can

"contact Elaine Mershon at either elaine.mershon@incisivemedia.com or +1 508 533-4995"

I've already asked to be removed from the mailing list.