End-To-End Encrypted Messaging App's Marketing Team Sends Press Release Via Unencrypted Email

A startup that markets its end-to-end encrypted messaging application as "the most secure way to communicate" has distributed a press release announcing its latest privacy features via unencrypted email sent from a Gmail account to a distribution list of 4,000 journalists. The press release, which leads with the headline "VaultChat 3.0: Because Your Conversations Deserve Military-Grade Privacy," was sent by the company's head of marketing, Tiffany Broadcast, from tiffany.b@gmail.com using Google's standard SMTP relay with no PGP encryption, no S/MIME signatures, and a CC field containing all 4,000 recipient email addresses in plaintext. "I appreciate the irony," said VaultChat CEO Anton Cipher when informed of the distribution method. "In our defense, our marketing department and our engineering department are separate teams with separate philosophies. Our engineering team would never send an unencrypted email. Our marketing team does not know what encryption is, in a practical sense." The CC field, which exposed every journalist's email address to every other journalist on the list, was described by one recipient as "the world's most efficiently distributed contact list" and by another as "a GDPR violation disguised as a product launch." Several journalists responded by requesting interviews about VaultChat's privacy architecture. These interview requests were also sent via unencrypted email, creating what one security researcher called "a cascade of people who should know better, communicating insecurely about the importance of secure communication." Broadcast has since been enrolled in VaultChat's internal security training program, which she described as "very informative" in a follow-up message sent from the same Gmail account. She has also been given a company VaultChat account, which she has used once, to message the CEO asking how to attach a PDF. VaultChat's stock rose 3% on the day of the announcement, suggesting that investors, like the marketing department, did not read the technical details.