Ticketek Tuesday afternoon issued a formal apology to the individuals whose emails it exposed in a botched newsletter mailout.

In the written apology, Ticketek CEO Geoff Jones urged people on the list to refrain from any desires to use the names contained in the newsletter list for nefarious purposes.

"Please be aware that these emails must not be used in any way, such as spamming," he said.

"If you are concerned that your email address has now been used for unsolicited commercial purposes, you can contact the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) at www.acma.gov.au."

Last Friday evening Ticketek sent an email newsletter to members whom it deemed would be interested in purchasing pre-sale tickets for the October performances of US rock group The Dandy Warhols.

However, rather than event information the newsletter body contained over 13,000 email addresses of the recipients on that list.

"The error arose by an email service provider including a number of email addresses in the content of the email as sent to you. These email addresses were provided by us to the email service provider on a confidential basis only for this promotion and only intended to be used by the email service provider to create individual emails to recipients who we thought may be interested in The Dandy Warhols.

Of course, individual email addresses should not have been disclosed to other email recipients. Although the problem arose through operator error of the email service provider, Ticketek takes full responsibility for protecting your privacy and resolution of this issue. We recognise that customer trust is central to our business. We have secured this list of email addresses and terminated our relationship with the email marketing agency that delivered this email on our behalf."

The company said it is working closely with the Privacy Commissioner in relation to its remedial action.

Interestingly, The Dandy Warhols feature a song titled "The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone". With that in mind, Ticketek is asking for forgiveness.

"Please accept our sincerest apologies and assurance that this will not happen again," wrote Jones.