Boner Candidate #1: A DANGEROUS EMAIL GLITCH.

When the Colorado Department of Human Services altered an email address for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect, no one deactivated the old address. A system created to prevent tips about child abuse and neglect from slipping through the cracks instead created a big one: Scores of messages sent to Colorado’s statewide hotline piled up unread for four years because of a mistake in an email address. The problem started in 2015, not long after Colorado created a statewide telephone and email hotline for reporting suspected cases. The Department of Human Services set up an email account, and then made a seemingly minor change, adding an underscore and the department’s initials to the email address to bring it in line with department standards, according to the Denver station KCNC-TV, which first reported the problem. The new address was released to the public, but nobody thought to deactivate the old one. So instead of bouncing back to the sender, messages sent to the old address landed in an unattended inbox. By May, when the department realized what was going on, there were 321 unread messages in that account. Most of them were spam, the department director, Minna Castillo-Cohen, told KCNC-TV. But her staff found 104 emails that were related to abuse or neglect, she said, including five that warranted urgent action. Read More

Boner Candidate #2: GRANDMA IS VERY TIRED AND SLEEPING.