Mailing list debacles

Over the years, there have been many cases where people who were subscribed to a mailing list or on a list of email addresses, asked to be removed. Sometimes the problem is on the side of the person running the mailing list, often times, recipients are also at fault for escalating the problem through additional "unsubscription requests".

• August 26th, 2006 - The Cinemat - Someone replied to the cinematsr@kiva.net list asking to be removed. Unfortuantely, the mailing list was configured to allow anyone who was subscribed to the list to post to it.

• Sometime in 1998 or 1999 - Indiana University - A secretary for the College of Arts and Sciences sent out an informational message to all students in the College and put them all in the To: line of the email. This meant that everyone who received the message could easily hit reply and send a reply to everyone else who had received the message. The headers of the message alone where about 1MB and it took the 'pine' email reader about a minute after hitting reply before you could start editing your message. About 10 people responded to everyone with "Get me off this list messages" before UCS butted in and stated that if anyone else responds to these messages that their accounts will be disabled.