Auto-correct blunder sends cancer donations to the wrong place

Earlier today, we showed you 10 funny mistakes made by an auto-correcting QWERTY keyboard. But not all auto-correcting mishaps are funny. Last week, a social media campaign called #nomakeupselfie was raising money for Cancer Research UK, and had a system all set up for donations to be made by having donors simply send a text.

To make the donation to fund cancer research, you had to send a text to a specific phone number with the message BEAT typed out. The idea, of course, was that your donation would help researches BEAT cancer. But the auto-correcting QWERTY on some of the devices used to make donations, had its own idea of who to donate the money to. Some changed the word BEAT to BEARS. Instead of making a donation to cancer research, the text was arranging for the adoption of a polar bear from the World Wildlife Fund. Donors received a return text that read, "Thank you for choosing an adorable polar bear. We will call you today to set up your adoption."

The World Wildlife Fund realized that they were receiving donations not meant for them. and made sure that all of the money received by accident ended up with the proper charity.


source: news.com.au via NYPost