What Happened?
Here is a summary regarding erroneously sent Daily Summary emails that were reported earlier today, Friday, August 28.

Once a day, Elance sends an email (to those who elect to receive them) that summarizes the previous 5 messages that have occurred inside the digital Workrooms. These messages facilitate collaboration between service providers and their clients. Such communications are typically messages that occur either in real-time between parties or are left in a bulletin board format.

A day earlier, we made a change to the script that initiates this nightly process. The changes were tested, but the errors were not identified. As a result, Friday's batch of such Daily Summary emails were initiated at 1:30am Pacific time on August 28th, and erroneously sent copies of the Daily Summary to some other subscribers of the daily summary feature. The error was discovered at 2:30am and the process was halted by 2:50am.

In all, a total of 73 Workrooms were affected.

This mistake happened due to human error on our side. It is inexcusable and we are embarrassed.

What Was Contained In These Emails?
The Daily Summary email contains text communication of the 5 most recent “posts” to the Workroom. Such content includes communication about Jobs in progress. No files or attachments are included in this Daily Summary email.

What Is Elance Doing About This?
We stopped sending Daily Summary emails at 2:50 am on August 28.

We fixed the faulty code, and will roll-out the new code only after extensive testing.

Email communication has been sent to all parties who were affected by this error.  We've notified both employers and providers from each of the 73 Workrooms, as well as communicated with the inadvertent recipients of the Daily Summary emails.

NOTE:  If you have not heard from Elance directly by 8:00pm Pacific time on August 28, you have not been impacted by this error.

We will update this page if any new information surfaces.