30th Apr 2007
Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay!
Yes, that’s “gay” written eight times. And apparently it’s enough to alert a spam filter at Telecom without the exclamation points.
Gay Hamilton of Nelson, New Zealand, was interested in broadband service, so she emailed the help desk at Telecom, her local service provider, which promptly bounced her email back to her with this message:
“[Your email] was identified by our content filtering processes as containing language that may be considered inappropriate for business-like communication…”
That “inappropriate” language? The word “gay.” Her first name.
What’s even more disturbing is that the chastising email was apparently intended for internal use, that disciplinary action was mentioned in a later part of the email, and that Telecom had spent time and energy developing a system to screen for “gay”…. Note that they do screen for “heterosexual” as well.
The story is Gay Filtered in Telecom Emails via Boing Boing and it’s required that I share the song going through my head right now… I feel pretty, Oh, so pretty, I feel pretty, and witty and gay….
