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The Perils of Mis-addressed Communications

Stuart King's blog posting on the danger of accidentally misaddressing emails reminded me of an incident I came across several years ago. But this was the opposite problem. Wrong source rather than destination address. And deliberate, not accidental.

The incident caused a large supplier to fail to win, or even be acknowledged for an important contract they had expected to win. The supplier enquired and was surprised to discover that at a late stage in the tender process the customer had received a spoofed fax informing them that the supplier wished to withdraw from the bid, and did not wish to be contacted any further.

A simple, crude, blatent dirty trick by a competitor. Possibly with inside help. But it worked. And it demonstrated yet again that the soft underbelly of all organisations is the human factor.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on January 17, 2007 11:20 AM.

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