Telecom New Zealand tells woman her name Gay is "inappropriate"
Wellington - A woman's email to Telecom New Zealand's help-desk was
rejected because the company's filter system found her name, Gay,
'inappropriate for business-like communication,' a newspaper reported
on Sunday.
Gay Hamilton, of Nelson, admitted that she did happen to be gay but was
concerned that the country's biggest public company had spent time and
resources deciding that the word was offensive, the Herald on Sunday
reported.
"If they do have to put content filters on, then maybe they should
ensure that it only gets genuinely abusive words," she told the paper.
Telecom's automated reply to her email said the message 'was identified
by our content filtering processes as containing language that may be
considered inappropriate for business-like communication.' It confirmed
that the offending word was 'gay'.
Public relations spokesman Lenska Papich said the response was triggered
by Telecom's internal email monitoring system, which exists to 'prevent
misuse of email technologies in the workplace and act as a deterrent to
harassment.
'Our systems internally detect a number of words, including both the
words gay and heterosexual, that could be deemed as inappropriate for
use at work,' she said.
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