The team sent an email to the hundreds of regular recipients of its press releases asking them to update their contact details ahead of the 2011 season. So these particular members of the media did the right thing and provided Team McLaren with the needed info. The bad news was that “McLaren forgot to hide the email id of the 'priority' and 'general' media distribution lists,” as reported by the GMM news agency.
What that means is that recipients pressing 'reply all' accidentally sent their details to hundreds of members of the media all over the world. Needless to say, their emails and personal phones hardly managed to get through the night, being flooded with messages from people they never had contact with in their lives.
The most “affected” journalist was former Grand Prix driver for McLaren and current pundit for the BBC, Martin Brundle, who wrote on his Twitter account: “What a ridiculous **** up. Brilliant. Hello everybody. My Blackberry battery is not prepared for this. Happy Christmas!”
In fact, some journalists took the gaffe in a funny way and called the whole affair the “McLarenmailgate” on Twitter. “McLaren's version of Facebook can perhaps be called McBook,” sounded one email reply.
Google News