I just received the following email from the MIT Free Speech Alliance, regarding the malicious email that I discussed in a recent post. It came just a little while after I submitted an inquiry on the subject, but unless they can write really fast, I don’t think there’s a causal connection. Here’s the message, with their email redacted since I like to be cautious about posting addresses on the Web. (The address of the perpetrator doesn’t merit any caution.)

Dear Members,
Starting last Friday, Nov. 17, we have heard from a number of MFSA members who received an email from a Yahoo.com email address that at first glance looks like it could come from our organization but which, it quickly becomes apparent, is from someone seeking to discredit us. The email, written in bad faith, mischaracterizes our positions or attributes positions to MFSA on issues it does not take a stand on one way or the other, before encouraging members to end their affiliation.
 
We appreciate that several of our members have brought this to our attention, all of whom have been understanding while wanting to know, quite rightly, how this could have happened. So far it appears that the sender has been trickling out a limited number of these emails over the past few days, and only a small number of members spread around the alphabet have been targeted. We have been examining the matter for the last few days and, while we cannot yet answer the question definitively, there are some things we can say with confidence. Most importantly, in assessing the situation with our web developers, we can rule out that our member contact information was obtained from an external breach of our system. It is possible that an existing member has pulled a selection of names from the member directory, so for the interim we have hidden the member directory to prevent the likelihood of this continuing. From the beginning we have listed our members’ names publicly on our website as a statement of our support, and recently we restored this public list to our new website. It is possible that this list was married to publicly available email addresses, so we have removed the public list of members as a further precaution.
 
We have also reported the email address (mit_freespeech@yahoo.com) to Yahoo for violation of its terms and services, and we encourage you to do so as well if you have received this email. (If you do not have a Yahoo ID, you can simply write “N/A” or “none” in that field when filing the report.) We also recommend reporting this email address to your email provider as unsolicited spam in order to get the address blacklisted.
 
We apologize for this inconvenience to our members. Anyone joining an organization like ours fairly expects that their information does not get into the hands of bad actors. We’re heartened by the fact that many of those who have alerted us to this campaign made a point of reiterating their support for MFSA’s work and mission when doing so. We do not take that confidence our members have placed in us for granted, and we will take what steps we need to ensure the protection of our members’ information in the hopes of maintaining it. We are starting a thread on this matter in our official member forum, and will be providing updates there as our investigation continues. We welcome your inputs there, and you are always free to reach out directly to us by email at [redacted].
 
Again, we appreciate your support and understanding, and we wish you and your loved ones a Happy Thanksgiving.
Sincerely,
Wayne Stargardt ’74
President
Peter Bonilla
Executive Director