Last week’s post about a baffling and possibly incriminating e-mail solicitation from ProFlowers produced a hilarious comments section and a lot of speculation as to the identity of Margaret, the woman (not his wife) to whom reader Chris was being encouraged to send more flowers. We have an update. The good news: Both the offending ProFlowers account and Margaret have been found. The bad news: The couple has no idea who Margaret is, but they have her full name and home address. They still have no idea how Margaret’s info ended up in the account in the first place.

To recap, if you missed the first post: Chris and Diane are a married couple. One day, Diane received an e-mail that addressed Chris by name and mentioned a “recent gift to Margaret.” Chris doesn’t know a Margaret, and certainly didn’t send her flowers. The couple’s credit cards weren’t compromised, so it wasn’t that. Why were they getting these messages? And who the heck is Margaret?

Here’s Chris’s update.

We found these emails were actually originating from an old ProFlowers account my wife had created, registered to her Gmail address, that had my name as the registered First Name (probably because she had used a form-filler,) that’s why the emails were going to her email, but started with “Dear Christopher”. Anyway, we found nothing in her history to “Margaret” only an order she had placed to me and one to her mother, years ago.

Next, we looked at the emails, and we found that at the bottom of the marketing emails, there were links: “Click HERE to send this bouquet to Margaret”. So we clicked, it took us to a shopping cart page. Click “checkout”, and there it is, Margaret’s address.

[Indeed, Margaret’s address and phone number were there on the original screencap. -Ed.]

We have no idea who this person but she appears to be a real person, some googling suggest she is mid-forties, married and a mother to 3 children. Neither my wife or I has ever lived in [Margaret’s state] or spent any time there at all. No clue how this order got associated, the names aren’t even close.

So the issue is still how and why this woman’s personal information, including her address and phone number, is being exposed by Proflowers. I have been really tempted to contact her (should I?) and I really think the company has some explaining to do with both of us. What does Consumerist think we should do next?

Don’t contact her. First, contact Proflowers and let them know that something strange has happened to her database. It could be something as simple as a missing digit in an order number making the order show up on your account, and no reason for Margaret to be concerned. Well, unless you have access to her credit card information, or actually do send her flowers and her husband gets suspicious.

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Why Does ProFlowers Think I’m Cheating On My Wife?

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