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E-Mail Snafu Sparks Spam Attack On Journalists
TFGeditor writes "According to an article at Editor & Publisher an e-mail mistake by the Casey Journalism Center at the University of Maryland wrongly invited hundreds of journalists nationwide to the university's prestigious 'Casey Medals' awards. The goof also launched a perpetual e-mail whirlwind as those who responded to the incorrect note unwittingly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list. The e-mail was an electronic invitation to attend the organization's annual board meeting and awards lunch in Washington, D.C. on Aug, 8, according to Carrie Rowell, conference coordinator. She said it was meant only to reach the center's 11 board members, who are invited to the event where 18 journalists will be honored with the press-related awards. Rowell said she did not know how many people were affected, but did not dispute that it was likely hundreds."
Somebody accidentally chose the wrong group in their address book. Also, a bunch of technically illiterate people hit 'reply to all' instead of 'reply to'.
The illiterates in question were journalists, and the content of the email was bland but interesting to journalists. So the Editor and Publisher publication picked up on it...
I'm not sure how this qualifies as 'news for nerds'.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Shouldn't this fall under the 'humor' category?
Christmas is the opposite of theft. See?
Doesn't anyone else get a bit nervous before sending an e-mail to a list and make sure that everything is set up correctly? I mean, I'd at least have glanced at my mailing list's address list seven or eight times (consecutively) before hitting send.
It's one thing if you read like an idiot in a personal message. It's far more damning when you do it en masse. Then again, maybe it's just far more accurate when you do it en masse.
E-Mail Snafu By Awards Group Sparks Spam Attack On Journalists
By Joe Strupp
Published: July 20, 2005 7:00 AM ET
NEW YORK -- An e-mail mistake by the Casey Journalism Center at the University of Maryland wrongly invited hundreds of journalists nationwide to the university's prestigious "Casey Medals" awards. The goof also launched a perpetual e-mail whirlwind as those who responded to the incorrect note unwittingly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list.
The back-and-forth sparked a circle of never-ending responses that, in some cases, kept hundreds of e-mails filling electronic mailboxes over several hours on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. But, in an unexpected surprise, it also brought many journalists in touch with old colleagues, while forging a number of new industry connections through something of an online cocktail party.
"People started chit-chatting back and forth and inviting themselves to the awards," said Kim Platicha, editor and publisher of Parentwise Austin magazine in Austin, Texas. "It really evolved from there, it was hysterical. I have already started an e-mail conversation with a couple of folks."
The e-mail was an electronic invitation to attend the organization's annual board meeting and awards lunch in Washington, D.C. on Aug, 8, according to Carrie Rowell, conference coordinator. She said it was meant only to reach the center's 11 board members, who are invited to the event where 18 journalists will be honored with the press-related awards.
But, due to a mistake, the e-mail apparently went to hundreds of people on the Center's e-mail list of journalists, according to many who received the message and wrongly thought they may have won a medal. Rowell said she did not know how many people were affected, but did not dispute that it was likely hundreds.
"We unintentionally sent an e-mail intended for our 11 board members to a large number of the journalists in our database, who in turn started receiving mass e-mail replies from puzzled recipients," Rowell said in a statement, which also was posted on the center's Web site. "The database error has been corrected. We apologize for the miscommunication and for any inconvenience it caused."
That inconvenience was limited, for some, to just the original wrong e-mail and a follow-up sent by Rowell that explained the mistake. But for most, the first e-mail was just the beginning. When many of those who received the mistaken note responded to alert Rowell that they had received it, their responses went to every recipient on the list.
"It must have been 300, 400 e-mails," said Michael Marizco, a reporter at The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, who said he got the mistaken announcement Tuesday afternoon. "It annoyed me, but it is funny."
Rowell said she could not explain why so many responses, which were meant for her alone, would be sent to each person on the original message list. Because of that, some recipients ended up getting hundreds of copies, over several hours.
"It was a headache to deal with when I was working on a story," said Mark Luckie, a reporter at the Daytona Beach [Fl.] News-Journal. "I sent an e-mail back and they kept coming." Susan Keaton, a suburban editor at the Chicago Tribune, thought the incident was over when she closed the original e-mail. But a flood of e-mail came in about 20 minute later. "People were just sending to 'Reply All,'" she said. "Hundreds of them and a lot of out-of-office automatic responses and unable-to-delivers. It was hundreds of people."
"You are in the middle of working and you keep getting flooded on your computer," said Richard Bilotti, publisher of The Times of Trenton, N.J. "It was very annoying." But not everyone took it as a hardship, as some respondents said side e-mail chats developed among some recipients, while others acknowledged getting in touch with old colleagues and friends.
Marcos Martinez, program director at KUNM public radio in Albuquerque, said that the ma
I will probably get modded down for this, but I think Rowell was not properly trained to be in her position. In this time, computers have become relevent in many areas (especially publishing and journal) and anyone in a relevent field should be reasonable educated technically. Perhaps a CS course? Computers are becoming as essential as automobiles in jobs. Would you hire a mail carrier that is not a licensed driver? He would likely crash the truck, just as many thousands of stupid users in important fields make stupid mistakes like installing spyware, or sending an e-mail to the wrong parties.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
I didn't expect to RTFA and find that people actually thought it was funny/beneficial.
I mean, it might have been news (or at least interesting) if people were pissed. Then they "rekindled friendships" and all sung campfire songs, and I ceased to care.
In other news, I left my vacuum cleaner in the hallway and my brother stubbed his toe. He was going to be pissed, but decided not to be, so it was all good. He actually thought it was funny eventually. Just so you all know.
Of course the best solution would be to stop and think about what you're about to do - nowadays shifting that mouse cursor slightly and clicking the wrong button can be hazardous. You'd think they could come up with some confirmation dialogue.
This is only news because it happened to Journalist. The very keepers of the news.
To them this seemed like a big deal, so they thought it might to us. Well, it doesn't. I wonder how it got past our vigorous screening process here at Slashdot...
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
Under the sun, but it's always funny to read. Category Humor may be more appropriate. Cheers Korbinus
*** Korbinus ***
http://www.geotruc.net
Also, a bunch of technically illiterate people hit 'reply to all' instead of 'reply to'.
Yep, this is the crux of the matter. One might think that the denizens of
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Uhm... English please?
Okay, I'm growing tired of the misuse of the word "Spam". I know that a lot of people consider all unwanted or wrongly sent email "spam" - but this certainly isn't.
An email was sent to more people than intended. That is not SPAM.
The reply-address was an email list. That is not SPAM.
A lot of unwitting journalist morons continued to reply the list, generating more emails. It's not spam - it's stupidity on the part of the journalists.
It's not spam! Of course it was an error to send out the email to a lot of people - but it's the same fucking receipients that generated the flurry of unwanted emails... and for each fucking 'get me of this list' - everyone got more crap into their inboxes.
I'll say most of the blame is on the journalists that coulnd't keep their fingers of the 'reply' buttons.
Mod the parent up. When front page stories this banal are posted, I welcome even the worst of troll posts.
This is what passes for news on slashdot now? A group of people don't follow basic email practices and cause a minor flurry of emails in their own group and you think this is news?
Can't wait for the dupes to show up in a few days.
This just in: somebody made an email snafu! Can you believe it!?
Coming up after the break: pornography breaches the Internet, a heated debate breaks out in comp.os.vms, and somebody's grandmother installs "the America Inline" from a floppy disk.
I agree. It has to be around 30 years now since this sort of thing started happening. Since email and mailing lists have existed.
Maybe it's news about how dumb journalists are, but if you go into any newsagents and have a look at what they're writing you can see that for yourself anyway. For gods sake don't buy anything, it only encourages them.
Deleted
I have to agree with you -- a bunch of [most likely Outlook] users click on Reply-To-All and 1) this is worthy /. news? 2) how in the heck is this SPAM?
... with any number of them about to be re-infected again ... they will soon learn what SPAM really is all about.
Of course -- with their address now added to a couple of hundred recipients computers
In the context it happened though -- that certainly wasn't spam. Not even close.
There is an interesting feature in the Microsoft POP3 connector included with SBS 2003 that can also cause such a flurry of mails.
When the original sender is stupid enough to include all addresses a mail is sent to in the To: header, and two or more readers of mail have their mailbox at an ISP and copy it to their Exchange server using the abovementioned Microsoft POP3 connector, mail can really start bouncing around.
Why? Because of a bug in the Microsoft POP3 connector, mail that it retrieves from a POP3 box is sent to all addresses in the To: line. So the mailserver of every user of this crap will re-send a copy of the mail to all recepients, even those outside his or her own domain.
When two or more users receive the message, they start sending more and more copies around.
A while ago we received the same message from someone several thousand times. It took me a while to figure out what was really happening (we are not using those MS products ourselves), and the only way to kill it off was to reject all mail from the original sender.
It seems that KB835734 offers a fix for this fatal bug, but MS does not consider it critical so I presume most admins have not applied it. Those SBS systems are a ticking bomb in the e-mail system.
In other news, I left my vacuum cleaner in the hallway and my brother stubbed his toe. He was going to be pissed, but decided not to be, so it was all good. He actually thought it was funny eventually. Just so you all know.
1. You have your own vacuum cleaner.
2. You talk of this fact very casually. Thus, it seems likely that each member of your family has their own vacuum cleaner.
3. You keep this vacuum cleaner somewhere other than your room.
4. Each member of your family likely keeps their vacuum cleaners outside of their rooms.
5. This would cause for centralization. e.g. Each member of the family has their own vacuum cleaner in what is refered to as The Vacuum Cleaner Closet.
6. You are old enough to have your own vacuum cleaner, or at least you were raised to do chores at a very young age.
7. Your brother decides on his emotional state.
8. Your brother thought that stubbing his toe was funny.
9. You post on Slashdot.
Ergo, your family is likely known as The Crazy Family. You and your brother are in your mid-40s and live with your parents, who are deceased and stuffed and left on the couch. Mother's penetrating stare still nags you to clean the house furiously. You clean yourself even more vigourously. After all, you need to be clean for when you kiss Mother goodnight. She so hates the dust and dirt foul boys bring with them. Your brother and you fight often, but usually you give it up "for mom's sake." You and your brother take turns moving Mother and Father's vacuum cleaners around in the vacuum cleaner closet so it seems like they are still alive. You and your brother do not work, but manage to pay the bills by selling a part of Father's skin every week.
I got caught on this years ago. Replying to replys to the entire list there is no reply to all option. The only way to stop it is send a unsubscribe before you send a mail with the list server as the return address so it melts down under the load. Oh and after you add all the boneheads address that run the e-mail server to the subscribe list. I had this happen on a long weekend years ago and I bet if people had guns they would have killed each other.
Millions of very angry mails. I bet there still cleaning up there inboxes.
Also in the news today, Michael Jackson is not vegetarian.
I have a suggestion for the moderators of slashdot. There's something called the "so what?" factor, and if you can't answer that question about an article, then don't post it.
One of the not least prestigious Canadian law firms (*ahem*Lang Michener*ahem*) recently sent a blank email to 342 law students who were applying for articling jobs.
Not only did this reveal the names and email addresses of all the applicants, it was followed up by two "Recall" emails, similarly addressed.
Retards abound. The power to really do stupid things has become all too easy and accessible. That or the average intelligence has kicked the bucket, so to speak.
I think this is an amazingly funny story. It's a standing joke in the newspaper business that all journalists tend to be a little inept when it comes to anything technical, like adding two numbers together for example, so I'm not at all surprised to see that this happened. However, I am pleased to note that many of my colleagues turned an adverse situation into an opportunity to reconnect with long lost friends and coworkers. That's journalism for you -- it's all about the gab.
I will probably get modded down for this, but please don't start posts with 'I will probably get modded down for this'. It just looks like you are begging.
This girls cousin informed the entire family of her love affair. WTG reply-all!
Address book? What for? I only know 2 people, you insensitve clod!
Didn't I see a Microsoft Office magazine ad that said the "Reply Everyone" era is over? I guess you need to upgrade for that feature.
I've seen this happen many times with tech illiterates. It's only of interest to journalists, and of no interest to us. Incidently, doesn't it get frustrating to see journalists misreport things over and over because they have journalism training but no science training, computer training, medical training, [fill in the blank]?
Asparagus has many and excellent powers.
I don't think it means what you think it means.
I mean, on the one hand I could usher the world into the Star Trek era, where energy and material goods are abundant and world peace miraculously ensues, but on the other, these absolutely imperative diversions present themselves. I mean - wow! - someone accidentally sent email to too many people and other people responded. Damn. I've never seen that before.
Glad to see the /. editors are picking and choosing the most delectable morsels for our consumption.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
A bug for what program?
I can rearrange and remove toolbar buttons in Thunderbird just fine. You just right click on the toolbar, choose "Customize..." and you get a palatte. You can drag a button down to the palatte to remove it from the bar.
I ask because this seems like the kind of dumb shit that that fucking retard usually posts.
From the symptoms, it sounds more like people were replying to the mailing list address, which was set to forward the mail to everyone else.
Rowell said she could not explain why so many responses, which were meant for her alone, would be sent to each person on the original message list.
That's not a "Reply All" problem, that's a system setup problem. I wouldn't blame this on the users.
Last post!
Yup, I got the email too. Does this mean I am not invited?
I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to... I hung in there as long as I could, but you long since passed the point when I stopped caring. If you're curious, it was right around raisin muffin.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yeah, I go to the University of Maryland, and this is kind of embarrassing for us, but ... why exactly is this news? It's not as if this kind of thing doesn't happen hundreds of times a day. Is it a VERY slow news day?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
This sort of thing is stupidity, not an attack. Unfortunately, it's stupidity that happens again and again.
As a rule of thumb, never set the return address for a mailing list or a group mailing to the group.
As a rule of thumb, never put more than a handful of people in the To/Cc lines of an Email.
Stick to those two rules, and you'll be doing OK. Break them only if you have a really, really good reason.
*Hundreds* of people. GASP! It was an accident. Send out an apology and forget it.
This wasn't really news for nerds, but TFGeditor accidently hit reply-to-all instead of reply when including this article in an email to a coworker, and Zonk's email addy happened to be oin there, and it was mistaken as an article submission.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Hey, virus writers, do you finally understand that you're wasting your time? I mean this must be the ultimate virus writer humiliation. Creating an email-flood virus is so easy that even totally clueless people do it by accident.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
No, it looks like KARMA WHORING.
This is a fairly common and unremarkable occurrence, really; I guess the fact journalists were involved might make it silghtly more newsworthy. Maybe.
What is far more interesting is the history of the word Snafu and it's related kin.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Nobody has ever sent an e-mail to the wrong address before, especially an address that was actually an alias for a large mailing list. And nobody has ever put that address in the To: field, allowing other people to inadvertently reply to it.
Simply fascinating!
At least, it would have been fascinating 30 years ago.
Ha! Ha! I have seen this bug in action too.
A hosting customer sent a press release to major dutch media, of course with everybody, role accounts, some personal addresses, in the To. Then the mailserver of some publishing company started looping on the message, resending it thousands of times to all recipients. It took the administrator of the borked server DAYS to resolve this!
Meanwhile, recipients' mailboxes were overflowing, bounces clogged our virus scanner, and press people were constantly calling in threatening the author and us (hoster of the domain in 'From') with legal action and blacklisting if WE wouldn't stop sending these damn messages. I understand the massive mail bomb did quite some damage to the message author's credibility.
Nice to see I'm not alone in my experience with this great product!
( ^_^)/
In 2003 the DEA launched an offensive called "Operation Pipe Dreams", against purveyors of drug paraphernalia- people who sold glass bongs and pipes online- enforcing a 1986 federal statute governing pipes and drug paraphernalia. Tommy Chong was one of the high profile arrestees in this operation, for being associated with a site called "Chong Glass" and its line of "Nice Dreams" smoking pipes.
These high profile busts all happened a few weeks after my wife and I had ordered a color changing waterpipe from one of those sites. Days afterward, a rather suspicious email arrived from the site announcing a "25% OFF EVERYTHING SALE" for the end of the month. The "To" address was "special@bongsite.com" (address changed to protect the guilty). We chuckled, since it couldn't be more obvious what was going on, and forgot about it.
Two days after this message arrived, I checked my email to find a couple dozen messages. The first was from some guy who claimed he forgot to enter the coupon code for his 25% off, and could the discount be applied to his order? That was quickly followed by another, who wanted to know why he got an email from a site selling bongs, and then lots of "me too" panicked messages came from paranoid stoners wanting to know why they were getting these emails, worrying out loud about Ashcroft's crackdown, claiming that they hadn't even ordered anything from the site (yeah right), observing that the site itself was down (duh) so there was no contact information available, etc. Then they would demand that someone do something to "fix" things so they would stop getting these emails- which prompted angry responses: "Get a clue I did not send this to you I also received this." It was funny watching a crowd of stoners freaking out, but the funniest email was a one line message: "so it's fair to say we all smoke weed".
Eventually some lady sent a message that seemed to shut everyone up: "Apparently they left this mailing list open to forward mail from outside sources. The only people who have any kind of exposure are people who send messages, as their identities are shown". I don't know that's really true (you could be exposed regardless), but it was consistent with the fact that both the initial "25% off sale" email, the "I forgot my coupon" email, and all of the panicked stoner emails had been sent to the same "special@bongsite.com" address, so the original "25% off sale" message could have been sent from anywhere.
Repeatedly regurgitated news is something he's an expert in.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Sure I also figured this was non-news picked up by an illiterate news agency (nice oxymoron!) but then RTFA and found the cocktail party reference. (People started sideband conversations with new/old acquaintances).
When you are in an airport, elevator or dentist's office and stuck in some frustrating situation with a stranger, often you will strike up a conversation with them commenting about the idiocy, commisserating, and so on. The above mail loop sounds like it was novel enough and big enough for the participants that they felt like they were in such a situation and "made the most of it".
Two days ago I was stuck by a train station due to an earthquake in Tokyo that caused all trains to be delayed by two hours. For some reason that comaraderie did not come to pass, possibly because people could easily leave the station (in my case small groups hung out at a nearby cafe and talked among themselves).
When you get email being sent to a lot of people from someone, and you can see the other people's names, still you don't generally start side conversations with them. Part is that you probably don't know them well enough; the journalists in this case did in some cases at least. But also, in group emails I think people tend to jump right down to the body of the message and while perhaps some people read the To: and CC: lines with interest, it is not a feeling that there are a lot of people with you reading the message concurrently. The journalists were all reading it within an hour or two on a given morning.
This makes me wonder if more of a chat-like element could be introduced into email. If you could see a photo or video of the other recipients, and maybe open a chat with some if you could see they were online at the same time, would that not increase the potential for communication among members of a group mailing? Certainly you can easily email people directly whom you have see on an ordinary mailing list, but I think a decision is made that you are "on a mailing list" and then if you have something you don't want the whole list to get, "whether you should send a private message" to someone you don't know. So I only reply privately to the list owner and people who reply to me, usually, and conversely don't put thank yous on the main list.
It may sound unintuitive to computer geeks but if you consider the convivial atmosphere of these convivial journalists mostly happily distracted one morning by an explosion of mail from tons of somewhat related people, I think it suggests the possibility of a different mode of network communication that even if only text based, could mix positive elements of video conferencing, IRC and threaded discussion sites, possibly as an add-on to a mail client.
by the phrase "slow news day."
One Word - UNSUBSCRIBE
Matt Prescott OuterBlogs
That should be:
"as those who responded to the incorrect note witlessly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list."
Etymologically they're the same thing. Somehow "unwittingly" has somehow come to mean "unintentionally" rather than "done without wit" where "wit" means "intellectual ability". The more literal meaning of the word, which is retained in "witlessly", is far more appropriate. They didn't all click the wrong button. Many clicked exactly the button they intended to, knowing full well what the button means. They were just witless to do so.
We here at Hormel would like to remind everyone that Spam comes in a can. And is pink. And oh-so-delicious.
paintball
It was some poor woman on her first day asking about getting set up for some software - turns out she emailed a huge distribution list, email hilarity ensued ending up with the bosses threatening to take action against anyone and everyone who replied to all on purpose - unfortunately for them, some of the people who joined in the fun where the ones who were making the company 10s of millions.
A few months ago I received the worst flood of email that I have ever received due to the unfortunate interaction of two computers. The sysadmin on the machine on which I actually read my mail made an error in updating the mail system (failed to install some PERL module, I think it was) that resulted in the mailer sending out bounce messages although in fact the mail was delivered. A number of these messages were in response to mail forwarded from my account at another institution. Unfortunately, that machine was not configured to detect and terminate loops, so it forwarded the bounce messages back to me, which of course triggered new bounce messages, ad infinitem. I got over 7,000 messages in about 12 hours.
There was an incident at my school recently where SOMEONE mailed a ton of students with an excel spreadsheet that contained people's names and social security numbers. It wasn't sent to a mailing list either.. Each of the hundreds of individuals that got it were individually added to the "To:" field (it was a lot - enough to make Thunderbird sit there rendering the list of names for good 10 seconds.) Of course, some recipients had to respond with meaningless comments mailing back hundreds of people in the process.
PEBKAC e-mails.
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
He sent out a mass email to 7,000 of his closest friends saying "please vote my player as an NBA All-Star". He put all of the names in the "TO" rather than the "BCC" box.
Instantly, all 7000 people had each others' email addresses. Many of them did a "reply-to-all" to chat about what a mistake that was, while others used the list to buy/sell tickets and basketball merchandise to each other.
Eventually, Mark sent out another mass-email apologizing for the mess.
Rid yourself of these lists and setup blogs.
No more mistakes like this again.
Student services at my school set up a list for all employees, and I got to laugh for about a week while people sent messages to the list telling people to stop sending messages to the list. Over 90% of the messages read something like "Come on people, stop sending stuff to the list, you are just adding to the problem". Some people just cannot comprehend the irony and hypocrisy of doing that. It was the Best Week Ever.
Apple's Mail.app does this; if someone's online, there's a dot next to their name in Mail and you can easily start an iChat session with them.
Soudns fabulous! Doh, shoulda worked at Apple. Anybody actually use this? I would have thought you'd hear more about it if it greatly stimulated chats. Perhaps you can only talk to one person at a time, or iChat requires a video camera? Comments pls if experience with it.
Thanks,
Matt
iChat's an IM client compatible with AIM. It does support video, and in 10.4 supports multi-person video sessions - haven't tried that as I only know one other person with a camera.