Fergie's Tech Blog

New Zealand: 'Gay' Filtered in Telecom e-Mails

Jonathan Marshall writes on The New Zealand Herald:

Telecom has apologised to a woman after the company's email filter deemed her first name Gay to be "inappropriate for business-like communication".

The cyberspace saga began when web designer Gay Hamilton emailed Telecom's helpdesk, enquiring if Xtra broadband services were available in her Nelson suburb. The automated reply was not what she was expecting. "[Your email] was identified by our content filtering processes as containing language that may be considered inappropriate for business-like communication," the email said. The offensive word was the woman's name: "The content which caused this to happen was ... 'gay' eight times, at two points each, for an expression score of 16 points."

posted by Fergie @ 4/28/2007 04:40:00 PM