CLARIFICATION: Lingo is a US company, not a New Zealand one.

My Lingo VoIP phone is the reason I can live in New Zealand and yet not feel absolutely, utterly isolated from the rest of the world. I adore it. I am a huge fan of the company. But somebody over there just hit the ’send’ button too early and made a major privacy mistake.

I just got an email with what appears to be every single Lingo client’s email address in the ‘To’ field.

Perhaps it wasn’t every Lingo client. I certainly hope they have more than 14,343 clients. But that’s how many email addresses were there.

The first lot of addresses…

After hitting Page Down a few times—look how much further you can scroll down!

I now have the billing email addresses of 14,343 VoIP customers. If only I had something to sell them! And I can only hope none of them have anything to sell me.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, a Lingo phone acts in all ways like a regular phone, except it plugs into a router instead of into the phone jack. I have a U.S. phone number that will ring through to New Zealand at no additional charge to either the caller or me, and I can make unlimited calls to all of North America and most of Europe. This has several advantages over a PC-based VoIP system:

1. I don’t have to have the computer turned on, or be sitting at it.
2. My mom can call me without having to learn anything new.
3. It is a huge convenience and savings for both me and the person calling me.

I am a tremendously loyal customer of this organization. But I can’t help but think it’s a little… icky, for lack of a better word, that more than 14,000 people just got my email address. How would you feel about it?

I’m sure it was an honest mistake. But what if this weren’t the phone company? What if it were the bank? Or the hospital? And what do you think would be an appropriate reaction from Lingo now?

Have you ever hit the ‘Send’ button by mistake?