North Carolina Parks Department Blunder Results in Spam

When the North Carolina Department of Parks and Recreation sent out an email to its mailing list, the employee responsible for writing the message, which wished recipients a happy holiday season and reminded them of the services the department offers,  made a big blunder. The culprit forgot to turn off the ‘reply all’. That meant when one person replied with a nasty political tirade, all 47,000 people on the list got it. When some of them responded angrily, demanding to be taken off the list or worried their personal info was being made public, a spam loop was created. Although none of the people who got the email could see anyone else’s name or email address, it appears few understood that and outrage ensued.

“We regret and apologize for the problems that were created,” Assistant Director Don Reuter said Thursday. “We were wanting to wish people a pleasant time, and we created some aggravation. That’s unfortunate.”

The department immediately disabled the reply all function when they realized what had happened, and says they will not send any more emails until they are sure their employees know how to make sure the ‘reply all’ function stays off.

This is a fairly common blunder for businesses and institutions to make, and it depends on user ignorance to really get going. A mass email is sent out without the ‘reply all’ disabled, and sure enough there is always someone who will immediately respond with a demand to be removed from the list. Those who get the demand will reply demanding to know why they received the demand, and it just snowballs from there. Soon an email loop will have formed with people replying to replies wondering why people won’t stop replying. It can get very ugly. If you decide to do any mass emailing, make sure you know exactly how your mailing program works and that it is configured properly. Check twice and then check again!