The NHS's 1.2 Million Employees Are Trapped in a 'Reply-All' Email Thread (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Business Insider report:The NHS's 1.2 million employees are currently trapped in a "reply-all" email hell. A "test" email was accidentally sent to everyone who works at the UK health service - prompting a series of reply-all responses from annoyed recipients going out to all 1-million-plus employees of the organisations. An NHS employee told Business Insider that there have been at least 120 replies so far -- meaning that more than 140 million needless emails have been sent across the NHS's network today. As a result, they said, its email systems are running "very slow today." The NHS Pensions department is currently warning people on Twitter that "if contacting us by email please be aware that there may be delays in responding due to an issue currently affecting all NHS mail."

Comments

So common...

[aicrules]

I don't work for a company with over a million employees but I see this happen frequently. People reply all out of rote habit, not even consciously. It's so annoying. I know one company who customized their distribution of Outlook to not have a reply all button. Short of that, my recommendation is to either protect the large distribution group so that only a select few can email it and/or making use of BCC for that group when original emails are sent so that even if people do reply to all there is no further waste of time. I tried individually shaming people when they did it for a while, sending them dumbass instructions on the location of the Reply button versus Reply to All, but that had a limited impact other than for more people to know I'm an asshole. Oh well...

It is useful heuristic

[abies]

I have seen it few times in big corporations I worked in. Somebody sends email to wrong group by accident and then we have 3 waves of attack:

1) Clueless people hitting 'reply all' asking for removal from mailing group
2) Even more clueless people hitting 'reply all' asking people to not 'reply all'
3) "Champions" trying to save a day by putting all in BCC and telling people to not reply all, unless you put it in BCC [1]

And then, few hours later, next timezone wakes up and things start again.

Why is it useful? After it is obvious what is happening, you create folder called 'idiots' and redirect all these emails into that group by outlook/whatever rule. After that, if you need to deal with somebody in your organization, first check if he/she is in idiots folder and approach accordingly.

BTW, 120 replies seems very low. I have seen mailstorms with group of 10k recipients (it was not 'all' group, just some subset of company) generate over 600 replies total in these 3 waves. 120 replies from 1.2 million looks to be technical limitation (or, maybe, there was some hero in IT department who pulled the plug fast enough...)

[1] - My favorite is self correcting champion, which first sends 'reply all' and then does reply to that with everybody in BCC saying he should have put everybody in BCC in first place...

Re:I'd say

[Anonymous Coward]

But bcc prevents this entire problem. If you send a message to a large distribution you should always use bcc. Then when some retard hits reply-to-all the reply is only directed to the original sender rather than the entire distribution list.

It could be worse

[rickb928]

I get an email for a division-wide thing.

I get a copy from my VP's admin, specifically targeting my team in case we weren't on the original distribution list.

I get a copy of this from my manager, since he doesn't want me to miss this.

I also get a copy of the original from a corporate level special interest group I'm part of.

Then I get a copy from a former team member. Just in case I was left of their distribution, since they left our team but believe they may be getting team emails that current team members are not.

And a copy from their manager, with a note to be sure the distribution list I cannot administer is properly updated to get these mails from the list they should not be and indeed are not part of. Just in case.

Then I get a copy from an interested team leader who wants to make sure we are in the loop.

And another from their #1 team member, who looks out for us.

And finally my cubicle mate leans over and tell me 'hey, did you get the email from......'

And so I have a 14GB .OST that i cannot backup locally due to GPO. and i get warnings occasionally that my file will be groomed back to an unspecified maximum size. Some day, real soon now. Right after they encrypt my files for no apparent reason, in accordance with some policy I cannot get a copy of.

I'm not bitter, really. I feel for the corporate security and cloud services guys. They can't fix stupid.

Re:Please remove

[networkBoy]

Because sometimes you change positions and should no longer be on a mailing list that had something to do with your old role, but the list administrator (who *might* not be IT, in fact likely isn't) hasn't taken you off it.

I had this happen when I transferred to an entirely different team, and over 5 months later was still getting e-mail from a list that the manager of the team refused to take me off of (it was retaliation for leaving his team). Finally with the [written] consent of my current boss I started openly replying to the list's questions with bogus info that looked correct. Nothing earth shattering, but also not quite right. Hilarity ensued.

I should add this list produced at least 50 emails a day!