An update about our email marketing platform, Wordfly

Since 10 July the Royal Academy has been unable to send out its regular e-newsletters, pre-visit reminders and other customer emails. The reasons for this are as follows:

Why haven’t I received marketing emails from the Royal Academy over this past week?
We are currently unable to send customer emails because of an incident at Wordfly, our third-party email provider.

What is Wordfly?
The Royal Academy uses this email marketing platform to send emails to customers. This is the standard model for effective, timely, communication with different customer groups and interests.

Has WordFly been affected by a cyber security incident, and how serious is it?
Wordfly’s investigations are on-going, but they have confirmed that they have been affected by a cyber security incident.

Has my data been impacted?
No. Wordfly have confirmed that no RA data has been affected by this incident.

Has this incident been reported by the RA to the Information Commissioner’s Office?
The RA takes the protection of all customer data very seriously, and we therefore notified the Information Commissioner’s Office on a precautionary basis. The Information Commissioner’s Office has since confirmed that regulatory action is not required and has closed the case.

I am (or have been) on the Royal Academy’s mailing list. What is the risk to me?
As the RA’s data was not impacted by this incident, there is no risk to you.

I am a Friend of the RA. Are there additional risks for me?
No. There are no additional risks for Friends of the RA.

When will I start to receive emails again from the RA?
We are working on an alternative way to send emails to our Friends and email subscribers now. You should begin to receive them again within the next few weeks.