Walmart apologizes for offensive, racist registration emails

Walmart apologizes for a burst of offensive and racist Walmart.com registration emails sent to thousands of people yesterday.

Starting at approximately 2 AM EST yesterday, people worldwide began receiving new user registration emails from Walmart.com where the member name was a racist slur.

Walmart registration email containing a racist name

These registration emails were widespread, with my wife receiving one and many people on Twitter also reporting that they received them.

Today, Walmart sent an email apologizing to those who received the offensive emails and stated that they are updating their account sign-up process to prevent these issues in the future.

"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 are working to update the account sign-up process to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again," said Walmart Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside in an email people receiving the email.

"Please know that no other activity took place on Walmart.com and that this account will be deleted."

"Again, we know the email sent was appalling and strongly believe those words should never be used. We’re looking into all available means to hold those responsible accountable."

It is not clear how these emails were sent out, but it is believed that someone took a list of email addresses and used it to create thousands of Walmart accounts with the racist member name.

BleepingComputer has contacted Walmart with questions about this incident but has not heard back at this time.