Sometimes, You Just Make A Mistake

In one of my many altruistic endeavors, I run several Internet related services for an organization including Web sites, DNS and Mailing Lists. For the most part, things go well, and as a member of the organization, I feel I'm contributing.

But every so often, something goes awry, and not only do I give up hours of my time, but get unbelievable aggravation from people.

I keep asking myself, "Why do I do it?"

Alas, here is what happened. One of the mailing lists (which have over 21,000 people on it) is a moderated list. There are only three addresses that are able to immediately send posts to the list, and these posts are then distributed. Any other e-mail sent to the list, is immediately trashed.

It worked like a charm for about 18 months, until some spammer/spoofer hit it lucky. They sent the right spoofed "From" address to the right auto-responder, which bounced off another auto-responder and then hit the mailing list. Normally when this happens, the third leg of the bounce gets trashed, no loop, no foul.Not this time. Providence shown on the malcontents, and the e-mail went to 21,000 people. Let's add insult to injury. It happened on a Sunday evening at about 11:30 EDT. Then approximately 12 hours later, the clean-up program ran and sent it out again.

Seem's that when your unlucky, your unlucky. That same email got stuck. After spending several hours upgrading and fixing, I missed this e-mail. You guessed it, 12 hours later, it went out again.

So I sent, or more correctly, the computer sent, three unnecessary and confusing e-mails to these 21,000 people. Now what do you think their reaction was?

"Of late I am being bombarded with msgs thanking me for visiting the web site. I have not done so and would appreciate it if these messages would stop." Came from one irate customer. When did three messages become a bombardment?

"Is there a virus somewhere that keeps on sending this same message out daily?" " this person asked a reasonable question."I don't know if this came from your site being that it was hacked, or I got it from someplace else. But I have been infected with the "Downloader-HI" trojan, which has been entered into my computer as a write protected file, which I have not been able to delete. Please scan your facilities to see if it is coming from you," said another.

All in all, we received more than 300 e-mails, yelling at us, offering help or just confused. When we sent an email out telling our customers what happened, we just got more of the same.

What's confusing to me is the attitude that they have been violated by three errant messages on a list which is part of an organization they belong to, as if they've suffered damages.

These same people would take the regular junk mail that came from the Postal Service, and mindlessly just throw it away.

Where is the difference? Junk is junk, and both waste your time.Am I off base or do I need to take a chill pill?