Cisco email accidentally sent to 1000s of employees causes message list MAYHEM Ever become stuck in a seemingly infinite loop of emails from colleagues hitting the "reply-all" option and asking to be removed from a mailing list containing the addresses of thousands of employees? If the answer to that question is a resounding yes followed by a massive sigh, then you ought to have some sympathy for Cisco, …
For a one-off I use the delete key. For more persistent irritating stuff like "your timesheet is now (over)due" I set up a mail forwarding rule to auto-delete. That's how I would have dealt with a storm like that described, although I might have gone back and laughed at some of the emails in the deleted items mailbox later.
During the last international mail-storm here , I watched hundreds of "unsubscribe" emails being sent to the entire list. My first thought was that many colleagues were foolishly hitting Reply-all. In fact, they were actually (still foolishly) using Reply.
Most list-servers in my humble experience simply treat a Reply as a Reply-to-list; you need to use a different admin address if you want out. List members tend to forget or lose this vital piece of info. At work, entire departments may get signed up to new lists, with little warning.
Some list-servers at least may trap any unsub requests, but it doesn't seem to be default.
Still, that's my observation as a user, not an IT admin of any sort.
I worked for a subsidiary of a certain Blue Bank and some noob sent an email to the "all Company" group (which covered every UK branch, head office, etc) asking a question (something like "does anyone know where the printer ink is"). Cue much "why is this coming to me?", "please stop emailing me" emails, which was stopped very, very quickly by an email from the CEO's PA, which simply introduced herself and stated that everyone should stop responding, the email was obviously an error and to leave it alone. It was a very clever email, it came across as a school teacher scolding children but with the added backing of "carry on and you'll be dragged in to see the CEO" but managing to leave the threat heavily implied without being threatening. kudos to her the trail stopped dead and everyone got on with their lives.
Or the person at a Scottish financial institution who somehow managed to import the entire corporate directory into their Facebook contacts and then sent everyone a friend request. The recipients were surprisingly unfriendly.
The Management subsequently insisted that the directory should be hidden from everyone.
Some management type managed to send a message to every email address in the entire company - using OrificePower - so the X.400 email address list was so big that servers keeled over all over the place attempting to deliver them all.
Once the storm was finally over, said manager decided to send out an apology - to the exact same list.
I don't know if he was ever allowed to use email again after that...
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