Extra Fruit and the Danger of “Reply All”

It has been almost 10 years since the Melissa Virus first began to clog up the mail servers around the country- and not just because it mailed itself to users, but because so many people were hitting “Reply All” and telling people that they were infected with a virus. And sometimes you don’t need a virus to clog up email systems. Sometimes you just need to announce that there are free bananas in the kitchen.

A hilarious tale of Exchange Server abuse and misuse is here at MetaFilter.  Be sure to read the whole thing.  Some highlights:

Some poor underpaid secretary back in the UK had, on finishing her lunch, found that she had some fruit spare. Rather than see it go to waste, she helpfully put it in the kitchen of the floor she was in, and sent an email to everyone on her floor:

“Free bananas in the kitchen!!!”

Sadly, however (and yes – it’s obvious where this is going), she sent it to the wrong list.

It didn’t just go to her floor.
It didn’t just go to her office.
It didn’t jusk go to the UK offices.

It went GLOBAL.

What followed was the most ridiculous, slow motion email catastrophe I’ve ever seen.

First the UK replies streamed in – the standard emails that occur in this situation as already described by many posters above. The Out-of-Offices, the angry threats, the requests for removals, the threats to people requesting removals all – of course – fully utilising the “Reply All” and list functions.

Obviously the system collapsed and for hours the UK IT guys struggled to sort things out – everytime it came back up, email war would break out again and the situation would be repeated.

Luckily there are utilities in Exchange now that allows admins to filter keywords and block and remove emails from inboxes.  But this type of email storm still occurs from time to time in large organizations.