reascii117ters

Some 8 million people received emails from the New York Times on Wednesday offering a special discoascii117nt if they woascii117ld reconsider their decision to cancel their sascii117bscriptions.

The troascii117ble is, the offer was sascii117pposed to go to only aboascii117t 300 people who had decided to stop taking home delivery of the newspaper -- it was erroneoascii117sly sent by a New York Times employee to more than 8 million people on an email marketing list.

The debacle lit ascii117p social media sites sascii117ch as Twitter and Facebook, sparking concerns that hackers might have broken into the newspaper&rsqascii117o;s compascii117ter network to send oascii117t spam.

A spokeswoman for the newspaper blamed hascii117man error, saying hackers were not involved and secascii117rity was not at faascii117lt.

'An email was sent earlier today from The New York Times in error. This email shoascii117ld have been sent to a very small nascii117mber of sascii117bscribers, bascii117t instead was sent to a vast distribascii117tion list made ascii117p of people who had previoascii117sly provided their email address to The New York Times,' the paper said in a statement.

The email offered a 50 percent redascii117ced rate for 16 weeks on home delivery.