The horror of sending an email by mistake (and what to do next)

A stray message has allegedly landed BBC presenter Tony Livesey in hot water. But some past mix-ups have been even more cringeworthy

Whether it’s a snarky email about your boss to your boss, or a dreaded accidental “Reply All”, most of us have experienced the horror of a misdirected message. So we might spare a thought for Radio 5 Live hosts Tony Livesey and Clare McDonnell this week. The drive-time presenters have reportedly fallen out, after Livesey, 60, allegedly sent a derogatory message about McDonnell’s presenting ability to her by accident.
It sounds like a plotline straight from an Alan Partridge show, but a source said: “Clare received a message from Tony basically slagging her off and she was livid. She no longer wants to work with him and that has caused total chaos at the station. People are being shifted all over the shop and into different slots, which isn’t going down well. 
“Clare is well within her rights to be angry – but it’s made the atmosphere at 5 Live really frosty. It has become a nightmare there.”
Recently, Livesey and McDonnell, 57 – who have presented the drive-time show since February 2022 – have alternated in hosting the slot. Earlier this month, the BBC confirmed it would be making changes to the presenting roster at 5 Live but declined to explain why. From December, Livesey is back on the “graveyard shift” of 10pm to 1am, the slot where he started his 5 Live career in 2010. He will be replaced by Chris Warburton on the coveted drive-time show.
It’s not the first time a BBC journalist has been caught out by an apparent digital faux pas. Earlier this month, the BBC cancelled a prime-time interview with Boris Johnson after the presenter Laura Kuenssberg accidentally sent the former prime minister her briefing notes “in a message meant for my team”.
Johnson probably understood, given his father Stanley Johnson made a similar blunder back in 2020. Stanley emailed British officials following a meeting with Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming, saying that Xiaoming was “concerned” about a lack of contact from the prime minister over the coronavirus outbreak. Stanley inexplicably copied the BBC into his email. 
No one is immune to the agony and awkwardness of the misdirected email. According to a survey published in 2021, over half (58 per cent) of workers say they’ve sent an email to the wrong person and – shockingly – one in four people who made email mistakes at work subsequently lost their jobs. In companies with around 1,000 employees, at least 800 emails are sent to the wrong person every year.
Even staff at the most prestigious of institutions make messaging mistakes. In 2015, the Bank of England accidentally sent details of a secret taskforce investigating the impact of a British EU exit to a journalist. And in 2019, Donald Trump’s team emailed talking points for handling Ukraine to Democrats by accident, and then tried to recall the email.
We don’t know the contents of Livesey’s alleged message, but Peter Dutton, Australia’s leader of the opposition, can probably sympathise. In 2016, when Dutton was immigration minister, he tried to text a colleague to complain about a “mad f—ing witch” of a journalist, but sent it to the journalist herself. She quickly responded: “You know mate, you’ve sent that mad witch text to the mad witch”.
Embarrassing or offensive missives are one thing, but if the message contains sensitive customer, client or company information, you could be in violation of data privacy laws. Misdirected emails are the number one security incident reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The problem is so common that the UK start-up Tessian has even developed email software to warn users who might be about to accidentally hit send on an email to the wrong person. The software analyses messaging patterns so that if a user misspells a name or lists the wrong contact, it will alert them before they hit send.
Most messaging technology has an “In Case of Emergency” button. WhatsApp now allows you to delete texts for up to 60 hours after sending them. Gmail users can activate a feature that enables them to “Undo Send” of an email within 30 seconds, and in Outlook you can recall a message, but that only works if the person hasn’t read it.
So what else can you do to prevent email idiocy? “It’s good practice to double check every message, especially if you’re aware the content is sensitive or confidential in some way,” says Alice Stapleton, a career coach. “Check not only that you are sending it to the right person, but whether you would be happy for others at work to know the content, as work emails are often monitored and can be forwarded without your consent.”
“Take your time over messages, too,” she adds. “It’s often when we’re in a rush that we make these sorts of mistakes. Try not to have too many messaging platforms open at one time. When we’re switching between lots of platforms or apps, we’re more likely to get distracted and hit the wrong button, or end up sending it to the very person we’re talking negatively about!” Indeed.
But if you can’t avert digital disaster, Liz Wyse, an etiquette expert at Debrett’s, says you need to clean up the mess fast. “If you send a damaging email to the wrong person at work, you must act immediately,” she says. “Send a follow-up email to the recipient, acknowledging the mistake and apologising profusely. The more explicit you can be about the reasons for your mistake, and the more apologetic you are about making it, the less damage you will do. The most important thing is to act as soon as possible, and not to let your error fester.”
Stapleton agrees. “It’s worth remembering that everyone makes mistakes, and to try and move on from the situation as soon as possible, rather than ruminate about what everyone is thinking,” she says. “Hopefully most people will see the funny side and won’t give it a second thought, depending on the seriousness of the content, of course.”
And if you’re on the receiving end of a message that wasn’t intended for you? “I think the best policy is simply to notify the sender of their mistake, delete the message, and leave it at that,” says Stapleton. “Of course, if the content is offensive or harmful in some way, you may need to report it to your line manager or HR.”
But not every mis-sent message has negative consequences. Wanda Dench, a grandmother in Arizona, went viral after texting her grandson to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner. She sent the message to the the wrong number, and ended up inviting a random stranger, Jamal Hinton, over for turkey instead. That was in 2016, and Hinton has attended Dench’s family feast every year since. The heart-warming story is even being turned into a film by Netflix.
No doubt a certain 5 Live presenter is currently hoping that his alleged message mix-up all blows over. At least no one can see you blush on the radio.
The BBC and presenters were contacted for comment.