Ever seen an email storm?

[jmo21]

I thought people were wise to them these days, but the guy at the next desk to me was stuck in one during the week.

one guy replied with 6 seperate one word emails :

PLEASE
DO
NOT
REPLY
TO
ALL

morons!

[Sysman]

I thought the funniest part was the second mail, with an apology about the earlier mail saying “we fixed it” sent 15000 to each person.

Oh I love those "we fixed it" emails

Back when Usenet was popular someone with a misconfigured server was blatting out "Unsuitable content" replies to everyone who posted on a busy newsgroup.

Two can play that game, and didn't take long before the offending party did something about it

(Nothing like the volumes you are talking about, but irritating enough that retribution was swift in the face of complaints being ignored)

[threaded]

One customers mail server was so badly configured that it shat itself when the mail arrived as it couldnt handle the size of the to: field. It started forwarding on the original mail to all the original recipients, including itself, with our name in the senders field. Every time it got the mail from itself it did the same thing.

I especially like misconfigured mail servers.

Liked, that is.

[threaded]

Ever seen an email storm?

I've caused a few, but not since it became illegal.

[alreadypacked]

Someone sent an advert for some unwanted tickets. Her intention was to send it to just her department, but it went out to 30,000+ staff.

Then someone answered, including all recipients.

And on it rumbled...

I thought the funniest part was the second mail, with an apology about the earlier mail saying “we fixed it” sent 15000 to each person.

[DaveB]

Had one a few years ago where one of the business managers sent a mail out to 300 customers without using a group address. One customers mail server was so badly configured that it shat itself when the mail arrived as it couldnt handle the size of the to: field. It started forwarding on the original mail to all the original recipients, including itself, with our name in the senders field. Every time it got the mail from itself it did the same thing.

Customers were ringing us and shouting becasue they assumed the mails were all coming from us as they were seeing the same sender every time. Took the best part of two days to identify the real culprit and get them to sort out their server.

[Sysman]

Try 15000 users sent the same mail 15000 times, twice, (second time as they tried to fix it) Then add the complain mails as above, but it didn't bring the server down

But it took about 2 hours to clean my mail box.

Someone sent an advert for some unwanted tickets. Her intention was to send it to just her department, but it went out to 30,000+ staff.

Then someone answered, including all recipients.

And on it rumbled...

[thunderlizard]

Had an inbox of 16,000 once due to a toxic combination of out-of-office replies.

but more amusingly, I also once saw a feed of commodity prices suddenly stop dead because the client's brand new profanity filter decided one of the marker makers' company names was obscene. It caused a lot more swearing than it prevented on that occasion.

[Clippy]

Had something similar when I was a techie.

Mail server, Exchange 5.5, was grinding to a halt.

Did some troubleshooting and found the offending email - it was a word document with photographs pasted into it.

The bint who sent it had recently been on holiday and wanted to share here snaps leading to a 70Mb file.

The best bit was she sat right behind me - as I managed the site on my own, I used to sit within the business.

Should have seen her face drain of blood, I kid you not, when I broke the news to her that she had caused the mail system to grind to a halt. When I saw her face, I quickly re-assured her it wasn't anything to worry about as these things happen.

[stek]

I once accidently sent a very personal indeed email intended for the girlfriend (then working in Berlin) regarding the level of fullness of my sacks (you get the picture....), to the Bolton Wanderers Mailing List, 180 people at the time, there's roughly five of us now....

[TimberWolf]

Wot, no replies to the "do not reply to all" messages? As in do not reply to all when making "do not reply to all" messages.

[alreadypacked]

Saw an email storm in the company I work for last week.

Somebody in a US office mistakenly copied in a list containing 500 people on a email entitled Delivery and saying something like "Hey Jane, your delivery is now available in room blah".

It started off with individuals asking to be taken off the list and copying everyone in.

After about ten of those the first do not use reply all please was sent. It continued up to 80 emails.

I am sad enough that I counted them. 35 were people asking to be taken off the list, 40 were people saying please do not use reply to all and 5 were people making jokes about the situation while replying to all.

One variant of the "please do not reply to all" was someone thinking they were smart by replying to a previous PDNRTA by saying "People know not to do it but they always do". The sender had somehow managed to include all 500 email addresses expanded in the email which massively increased the size to 3MB.

The email servers fell over and took till the late evening for some mails to come through.

Try 15000 users sent the same mail 15000 times, twice, (second time as they tried to fix it) Then add the complain mails as above, but it didn't bring the server down

But it took about 2 hours to clean my mail box.

[DieScum]

Saw an email storm in the company I work for last week.

Somebody in a US office mistakenly copied in a list containing 500 people on a email entitled Delivery and saying something like "Hey Jane, your delivery is now available in room blah".

It started off with individuals asking to be taken off the list and copying everyone in.

After about ten of those the first do not use reply all please was sent. It continued up to 80 emails.

I am sad enough that I counted them. 35 were people asking to be taken off the list, 40 were people saying please do not use reply to all and 5 were people making jokes about the situation while replying to all.

One variant of the "please do not reply to all" was someone thinking they were smart by replying to a previous PDNRTA by saying "People know not to do it but they always do". The sender had somehow managed to include all 500 email addresses expanded in the email which massively increased the size to 3MB.

The email servers fell over and took till the late evening for some mails to come through.