Culture Fail of the Month: GoDaddy

GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar and web-hosting company, is facing backlash for emailing employees with a holiday bonus announcement right before Christmas. Backlash? Well, as it turns out, the bonus wasn’t real – it was all part of a “test” to gauge how gullible GoDaddy’s employees are.

On December 14, GoDaddy employees received an email from happyholiday@godaddy.com which announced that “2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you! Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus!”

Employees were asked to submit personal information by December 18 to receive the bonus. Two days later, about 500 employees who did received another email from the company’s chief security officer, Demetrius Comes.

“You’re getting this email because you failed our recent phishing test,” Comes wrote.  “You will need to retake the Security Awareness Social Engineering training.” So, no bonus and you’ve been sentenced to complete an eLearning course. What a perfect remembrance to a year most of us want to forget.

This article was originally published on CultureRenovation.com. Visit the website for additional resources, solutions, and information about the bestselling book.