E-Mail Snafu Sparks Spam Attack On Journalists 153
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."
Article text (Score:2, Informative)
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
Feature of Microsoft POP3 connector (Score:5, Informative)
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.