A Revealing Reply All Fiasco
The Wall Street Journal's Washington wire had a short piece on a "reply all" fiasco on a Homeland Security listserv. Apparently DHS sends out an email to "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of security and emergency officials working for corporations, governors’ offices, big city police forces and a myriad of federal agencies." Someone on the list wanted their email address changed, but hit the dreaded reply all button. (Maybe recipients were ccd?) The sort of email chaos that occurs when thousands of strangers are "introduced" via email ensued:
One immediately started networking: “I don’t think everyone realizes that yet, but what a nice way for all of us to get to know one another!” he wrote to the list, punctuating his observance with a little smiley face. That prompted another to suggest everyone on the list provide a local weather report. Some emailed pictures and their phone numbers and street addresses.
Many weren’t so jolly, demanding right in the subject line: “TAKE ME OFF THIS LIST.” That served to generate even more email traffic as others clicked on the powerful “reply to all” option, adding to the accidental DHS spam.
One outraged recipient took the time to set up an anonymous gmail account with user identity “youmorons7” and write a blistering note: “I can see the CNN story on this tomorrow. The DHS’s mail server was crashed yesterday by a group of security ‘professionals’ that are part of our nation’s defense against attack. Because a large number of these ‘professionals’ did not understand how mail reflectors work and what function their reply button served, many of them contributed to the massive wave of e-mail nearly brought the server down.
While the incident itself did not result in any sort of a meltdown, a senior DHS official said that "[t]he reaction of the security professionals on the list . . . was much more worrying." Ahh, the human element.
Comments