About
E-mail Storm (Reply Allpocalypse) refers to a spontaneous chain reaction of many-to-many messages in a group discussion that is usually triggered by an individual unintentionally sending one’s response to all users on the e-mail distribution list, instead of the original sender alone. Once initiated, other users often tend to prolong the discussion by replying to all users on the list with requests to be removed from the list or asking everyone to stop replying to all.
Origin
The earliest notable instance of an e-mail storm on a massive scale dates back to October 14th, 1997, when a Microsoft employee erroneously used the “reply all” option to unsubscribe himself from an obscure company e-mail distribution list labeled Bedlam DL3, which contained more than 13,000 e-mail addresses (approximately a quarter of the company’s employees). Soon, other employees who received the e-mail response began replying all in the thread with similar requests to be removed from the list, and some pleading others to stop responding to the thread. As a result, an estimated 15 million messages were sent by Microsoft employees, using roughly 195 GB of traffic in the process.
Spread
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On October 3rd, 2007, an unnamed subscriber to the United States Department of Homeland Security’s Open Source Intelligence Report, a daily e-mail newsletter sent to hundreds to thousands of recipients, unknowingly replied to all subscribers on the list with a request for a change. Within the next hour, several dozens of other subscribers joined in on the discussion with a wide range of responses, including pleas to cease replying all, spams of job offers and political advertisements and humorous messages with status updates on local weather, which amounted to more than 2.2 million messages by the end of the day; according to the Department of Homeland Security and Defense officials, the thread unintentionally triggered a minor scale DDoS event and exposed the names of hundreds of security professionals and government contractors,.
In January 2009, yet another e-mail storm nearly knocked out one of the U.S. State Department’s main servers after several American diplomats began replying all to a blank e-mail that was accidentally sent to thousands of subscribers on a global email list. Soon, a similar chain reaction unfolded, generating an extensive volume of e-mail communications which ultimately prompted the officials to issue a cable warning disciplinary actions for using the “reply to all” function.
“Department staff hitting ‘reply to all’ on an e-mail with a large distribution list is causing an e-mail storm on the department’s OpenNet e-mail system. Anyone who disregards these instructions will be subject to disciplinary actions.”
In November 2012, New York University Bursar’s Office sent a school-wide e-mail asking students to opt for paperless forms. Upon receiving the message, NYU sophomore student Max Wiseltier accidentally replied all to an outmoded Listserve system while trying to forward the e-mail to his mother for advice, which resulted in all 39,979 undergraduate students receiving his message.