If you’ve received a cryptic notification from the Starbucks app, you’re not alone — dozens of people say they got a message reading “Hello test1 from seank” from the coffee app on Tuesday.
It’s unclear how many people the notification went out to. Twitter is flooded with screenshots of it, with posts often tagging the official Starbucks account asking what’s going on. However, every single one I saw showed an iOS notification, so it’s possible Android users were spared Sean K’s greeting.
Sometimes, errant notifications are a sign that something has gone deeply wrong with a company’s cybersecurity. Last year, a hacker sent out an Apple News notification from Fast Company containing an obscene 4chan reference. They also compromised actual parts of Fast Company’s site itself, and the publisher ended up going offline for over a week as it patched up the mess.
If it actually was Sean K who accidentally sent the notification to production instead of test devices, I’d imagine they’ll be getting some grande grief about this from their co-workers for a long time to come. The good news is that they’re also going to temporarily be a legend on the internet, at least among the crowd that has Starbucks notifications turned on.
Now, we just need to come up with a drink that we all agree to call the SeanK Special. Personally, I’m voting for a Matcha Frappuccino with java chips and three pumps of test1.
Update March 28th, 3:32PM ET: Added confirmation from Starbucks that the notification wasn’t caused by a data breach.
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