I'm on a mailing list for a local pub. Apparently, the mail they sent out last night tripped a couple of antivirus filters. Unfortunately, the standard behavior of many corporate antivirus software installations is to send a reply to the message originator informing them of the virus and the action taken to protect them. When the originator is a mailing list with "reply-to" set to "all", the end result is a bunch of these messages going to people who don't understand why they're getting them, which in turn leads to "why am I getting this mail?" and "please remove me from this list" messages which also go to everyone since "reply-to" is still set to "all". We're at 25 such messages and counting, and it's not yet 8 AM.
Sigh. There are days when I'd like to meet the person who invented email and smack him a good one.
Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 09, 2003 to Technology, science, and math | TrackBackI love the "please remove me from this list" mails, when the instructions are clearly in the headers.
For additional fun, I love the fact that everyone needs to change the subject line, so that I can't filter it to the bit bucket easily.
Posted by: Michael on April 9, 2003 8:26 AMI'm glad I'm on the text-only list. I haven't gotten a single email from Rusty in the last 24 hours AFAICT.
Posted by: Ginger on April 9, 2003 9:35 AMIt always seems that putting any content in the headers is a damnfool thing to do. Too many mail clients obscure headers. And even if they don't, they just aren't a place that most people go looking for content. Unsubscribe info in opt-in/out lists should be a clear paragraph in the .sig (or at the top).
*sigh* I'm on that same mail list. Went into cpanel and blocked everything from it until they get it together. Annoying!
Posted by: Kevin Whited on April 9, 2003 1:40 PMIt's pretty clear that these guys aren't overly up on Usability Studies...
There was an email from them a while back. Somehow, the list got changed from moderated to unmoderated.
Posted by: Michael on April 9, 2003 1:40 PM