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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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
I agree completely! People with licenses never get into accidents. And taking a CS course means you never hit "Reply All" when you mean to hit "Reply".
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wouldn't that be grounds for a suit against the operator of that broken Exchange gateway? (forgery, damage to reputation)
Hmm, but look at the bright side: this appears to be a great pranking tool: just locate two or three of such SBS 2003 servers, forge a message to users on each of the three, plus your list of marks, send it on its merry way, sit back, and watch the phun!