Essential's Andy Rubin just rectified a huge mistake - good on him

This morning Andy Rubin wrote a note to the public regarding the company's recent mishap with emails and private customer info. That sizable mistake grabbed the attention of the entire Android-loving internets this week as it seemed many Essential customers had their personal information shared with email recipients they did not know. Today Andy Rubin rectified the mistake that was made.

"Yesterday, we made an error in our customer care function that resulted in personal information from approximately 70 customers being shared with a small group of other customers," said Rubin, Co-founder of Google's mobile operating system Android. "We have disabled the misconfigured account and have taken steps internally to add safeguards against this happening again in the future."

SEE TOO: Our Essential Phone Gallery

In addition to the written apology to those customers and the public, Rubin made mention (on Twitter) that Essential will be providing the customers affected with the Essential Phone PH1 at no cost. In a response to a question of whether the phone would be free to those affected customers, Rubin said, "Oh, we will be. I just didn't feel that it belonged in a blog post..."

Also included in the apology letter was the following bit on being a leader and taking responsibility for big errors like this one. "Being a founder in an intensely competitive business means you occasionally have to eat crow. It's humiliating, it doesn't taste good, and often, it's a humbling experience," said Rubin. "As Essential's founder and CEO, I'm personally responsible for this error and will try my best to not repeat it."

For more information on the Essential Phone PH1, head over to our recent feature The Essential Phone is a huge work in progress – including hands-on action and pre-review bits and pieces. This device is the first step in Rubin's aim to make a device company that's super simple, super basic, and super essential.