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Digital Blunders: 'My son's filthy email to granny' and other howlers...
"I managed to get to the confused grandparents pretty quickly and explain what had happened before they cut off his allowance..."

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Monday 01 September 2003

The silicon.com Digital Blunders 2 special report is well under way now and your hilarious confessions are keeping us all amused in the office.

Here is the latest selection of gaffes and howlers - though a word of warning, while the last one is among the funniest we've seen so far you shouldn't read it if bad language offends...

Upsetting my baldy boyfriend...
"I'd recently started dating this guy who was extremely touchy about his challenged follicles. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd send him a text message telling him how I felt. While checking my outbox a little later I was horrified to find that I'd actually sent 'Missing you baldy' as opposed to 'Missing you badly'. Luckily he saw the funny side of it."

Shocking the folks with friend's filth...
"My son at university is very good and sends his grandparents a regular update email on how he is getting on. His grandparents really appreciate this regular contact, but on one email he also copied in a number of his friends and me on this email. One of his friends replied in graphic detail about all he had been getting up to... and yes, he did a reply all.

"I managed to get to the confused grandparents pretty quickly and explain what had happened before they cut off his allowance..."

Smutty proposition to a not-so-nifty 50
"I wrote and sent a smutty email to my girlfriend, talking about how I'd like to treat her to dinner and the idea of eating it off her naked form. I sat there at my desk smiling to myself. Until that is one of the lady managers in my department replied enquiring whether the email was actually intended for her. The manager's email address was next to my girlfriend on my contacts list. She never mentioned it in person. But I couldn't ever look at her again.... especially as she was nearing 50 with facial hair problem.

Tasteless insult ends friendship...
"After a protracted email conversation with a friend, he forwarded the last message to a third friend. Unfortunately he had forgotten that he had earlier in the conversation referred to the third friend's wife as 'a cancerous tumour'. They haven't spoken in two years.

No, honestly I wasn't looking for gay porn...
"My worst ever gaffe was when I was at University. We had booked a coach to go and see the band Garbage down in Manchester and several of my mates fancied going along as well. I nipped into one of the computer labs to try to get hold of tickets, seeing a pretty girl from my course I decided to sit by her and headed straight for the Garbage website, not thinking that the band is American NOT from the UK I went for a .co.uk suffix.

"I was instantly transported to the "garbage dump, the UK's hottest porno site", at which point the lovely lady in question looked at the screen. I manically closed everything down, my ears raised the temperature of the lab by a good few degrees and I hastily explained my error. She seemed to believe me having seen me on the proper garbage website seconds later (.com). This and several other websites didn't yield tickets so I tried the website of music magazine Q. Not wishing to make the same mistake twice I typed in qonline.com instead of .co.uk. This transported me to the German 'Queers online' website, at this point the lady looked at my screen again...

"Needless to say I didn't get the tickets or her phone number!"

Don't read on if profanity offends...
"We have a client who produces mobility aids for people coming out of hospital or who are disabled. He must have had a tough weekend, as one Monday he asked us to produce a brochure for a new line of 'wanking aids'.

"How he did it, I don't know - the 'L' is nowhere near the 'N' key..."

Keep those confessions coming in. Email your howlers to editorial@silicon.com