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Some guy emails all of Microsoft and causes email shitstorm

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Some guy emails all of Microsoft and causes email shitstorm

#1

Post by fiona57 »

This morning someone at Microsoft accidentally emailed the whole company - yes, all of Microsoft - and started receiving a bazillion replies from people asking to be removed from the thread. How it is possible to accidentially email the company I do not know, but it seems that permissions on certain distribution lists may need to be tightened.

What happened next is where the story gets interesting and perplexing. People started replying all to tell everyone else to stop replying all, thus perpetuating the problem in an attempt to stop the mass email. You can't make this stuff up. "GOOD GOD STOP REPLYING ALL" is just one of the headlines from the reply-all emails that were sent out trying to get people to stop replying all. Its kind of a paradox, if you think about it.

Thinking that some people might not be getting the message to stop replying all, a new email was created with a different subject with CAPS instructions to stop replying all, which added to the overall slowdown, and essentially duplicated the original mistake and amplified the load on exchange servers through MS.

Emails to and from Microsoft employees have been bouncing back all day long. No report yet on when the problem will be resolved.

Re: Some guy emails all of Microsoft and causes email shitstorm

#2

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

Unfortunately, this has happened before. And not only once. Here's a description of a previous instance: http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2004/04/08/109626....

(It doesn't seem to have been the entire company -- about half of my team was spared -- but I'm sure it was a good chunk.)

Re: Some guy emails all of Microsoft and causes email shitstorm

#5

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #2

Unfortunately, this has happened before. And not only once. Here's a description of a previous instance: http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2004/04/08/109626.... (It doesn't seem to have been the entire company -- about half of my team was spared -- but I'm sure it was a good chunk.)

I have a fantasy that this is tied into midyear reviews, and that anyone responding automatically drops a point on the review scale...

Re: Some guy emails all of Microsoft and causes email shitstorm

#7

Post by tonteldoos »

Same thing happened at my company (~40k employees) about 2 years ago. Fortunately it is split across a couple of timezones, but after about 300 'Please do not reply-to-all' replies-to-all, apparently the exchange server crashed and took care of the problem :P

Re: Some guy emails all of Microsoft and causes email shitstorm

#8

Post by byoung2 »

I had a similarly hilarious experience a few years back, related to a distribution list but compounded by trying to recall a message. Someone from accounting had both Outlook Web and personal web mail open at the same time. He was composing an email about SOX compliance to all managers in the US for a large national company. Apparently he was also composing an explicit personal email to his girlfriend about what he had planned for the bedroom that night. Somehow his wires got crossed and the explicit email got sent to all the managers (I assume his girlfriend got the SOX email). I wouldn't have even read the email had he not tried to recall the message, which on some clients deletes the message, but on others, it just sends another email about trying to recall the email. Needless to say, he was fired on the spot.
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