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A co-worker at the city-government just chose the wrong mailing list and send an e-mail to EVERY SINGLE emlpoyee (about 20'000 people, including our police-department, hospitals, councils etc.).
Within A MINUTE hundrets of people responded to the mail by using the "reply all" button, pointing out that this mail obviously wasn't meant for them.
After another minute the same douchebags sent another mail (of course using the "reply all" button AGAIN), asking to be removed from the mailing list and stop spamming them.

Even two hours after blocking the mailing list immediately, our mail servers still are processing all those damn mails.

RIP exchange servers
RIP inbox
RIP faith in humanity

Edit: typos

Comments
  • 8
    How to deal with email storm.

    1. Disable the distribution list

    2. Use transport rules to drop any messages that match the current storm into a temp mailbox and do not send a NDR to the sender.

    3. Check temporary mailbox for accidentally caught genuine messages and restore.

    4. Watch for people still sending reply all and discipline them.

    5. Once emergency is over disable transport rule and reinstate distribution list.

    6. Consider disabling reply all as a group policy.

    Hope this helps in future.
  • 3
    And I thought my day sucked
  • 4
    @commanderkeen 20,000 people get email, if 1 percent reply all in the first hour?

    200 X 20,000

    4,000,000 emails...
  • 3
    This rant will cause me nightmares
  • 6
    @hch11 boy do I have the thing for you. don’t look at this if you don’t want tech nightmares

    https://reddit.com/r/...
  • 3
    @DeveloperACE nightmare would be an understatement
  • 2
    Wow a proper nightmare for the sysad on duty at that time. And an equally proper nightmare for poor people receiving a storm of emails.
  • 7
    Ok... I'm gonna be the first one...

    WHY THE FUCK THERE IS A 20,000 PEOPLE MAILING LIST THAT THEY CAN REPLY TO?!

    Thank you.
  • 3
    Used to work at PayPal when this happened a lot. There were tons of nested DL's. The best when everyone would reply all telling everyone else not to reply all.

    Then these two guys kept the chain by going back and forth about a brownie recipe making everyone madder.

    That was epic.
  • 2
    @seraphimsystems thanks for your helpful advice! I really hope our department leaders will agree to take preventive steps.
  • 1
    Frigg @azous @DeveloperACE
  • 2
    @katbreitin that's why my plan includes disciplinary measures for anyone still sending reply all after the first one or two.
  • 1
    Yeah those guys were fired but really it was idiots reacting to it.

    Fire the idiots who feed into their joke.

    Those guys were able to manipulate the emotions of 100’s of people.

    That is a true skill.
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