March 25, 2021

Global work-chat platform Slack yesterday rolled out a new feature, Connect DM, that allows users to send direct messages to people they do not work with. After just several hours, the company released a statement that it will be amending Connect DM due to its propensity as a tool for abuse or harassment.

Connect DMs are opt-in, which means that a user has to accept a request from someone before both parties could freely interact. The big mistake here is that the user sending the invitation is able to send up to 560 characters to the intended recipient, which is long enough for any recipient to receive abusive, threatening, or harassing messages from just about anyone. Furthermore, Slack delivers the message from a generalized master inbox thus making blocking difficult.

Slack immediately acknowledged their flaw and promised to correct  this in no time.

For more information, you may view the original story from ArsTechnica