Privacy breach on Prolific via a requester

6 months ago there was a survey on Prolific from a requester named Gabriel De Sena Collier, a researcher from Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Workers were able to opt-in to do a 6-month follow-up by providing their email addresses within the survey. 6 months later (last night) Gabriel emailed the follow-up and included over 300 workers' email addresses in the "To" field of the email exposing workers' personal email addresses to one another (yes, Prolific has the option and provides a secure email address for this type of thing but the majority of workers used their personal email address). In a follow-up email, Gabriel apologized and claimed that the emails were meant to be bcc'ed but were not and that they were looking at ways they could recall the emails sent, in which there is no email mechanism in place to "recall" emails.

If any Prolific workers are here and opted into this follow-up and received this email, but didn't see/notice that your email was exposed to other workers, now you know.

Thoughts anyone?

submitted by /u/_The_Atheist_
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoney/comments/of70vt/privacy_breach_on_prolific_via_a_requester/