Walmart Apologizes To Customers After Racial Slur Causes ‘Disturbing’ Emails

Walmart (WMT) is apologizing to customers after a “bad actor” sent emails from its email addresses containing a racial slur.

Walmart was alerted to the issue by a number of Twitter users, who posted screenshots of the “Welcome to Walmart” email that was sent from the company’s official help@walmart.com address to customers in both the U.S. and the U.K., calling them a racial slur.

Customers were confused by the email, calling out Walmart and asking for an explanation from the retailer. Many asked for the company to contact them, saying that email was “disturbing” and “inappropriate.”

The retail giant released a statement, obtained by The Independent, that said a “bad actor” has created fake Walmart accounts using real company email addresses and changed the first names of the customers to a racial slur.

Walmart continued in its statement by saying, “I am reaching out to let you know we are very sorry that you received an offensive and unacceptable email. We discovered that someone outside of the company created false Walmart accounts with the intent to offend our customers.

“We know the email was appalling and strongly believe those words should never be used.”

Walmart added that it will automatically delete all the new accounts created by the “bad actor” and is working on its signup process to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again. It is also looking to hold those responsible accountable for the emails, it said.

Some customers that received the email told The Independent they were not even signed up to receive Walmart emails.

But Vikram Thakur, technical director at Symantec, the security software firm owned by Broadcom, told CNN finding people’s email address online is easy for bad actors.

“The actors likely acquired email addresses from an easily and freely available 'dump' from a historical third-party compromise,” he said.

It was unclear at the time of writing how the “bad actor” obtained the email address or how many fake accounts were created under the Walmart name.

However, Walmart did say that its systems were not hacked and no customer data was comprised, according to The Independent.

Shares of Walmart were trading at $141.71 as of premarket hours on Tuesday, down 5 cents, or 0.04%.