I have received a flood of emails today all replying to the entire mailing list with messages from

Please remove me from your list.

to

Hey…take me off too and everyone please stop copying me with any of this…thanks…not sure at all how I got into the mix…

Someone got really desparate

STOP STOP STOP

and someone else seemed seriously confused

I gave you my information so I could send you my empty ink cartridges, and I even sent an empty in a few weeks ago. My inbox is full of these Ginko Balls messages, and I think the originator was 3 ring ranch. Please remove my information from your files. I regret that I signed up with you in my desire to help animals. My contributions in the future will go elsewhere.

I got quite a laugh out of it. Every message asking to stop was actually part of the problem and made it worse. I was waiting for the mail server to collapse but it kept up just fine.

I set up a filter (move to Trash) once I realized where this is heading. Unfortunately someone started a new thread with a different subject asking everyone to stop. And later a third thread. Note to self: Filter on recipient, not subject!

Anyway, the admin finally realized what was going on and stopped the madness. Also, he sent out an email explaining what happened. However I do not quite buy the story because I do not remember signing up for this list at all. I searched my email archive and couldn’t find a reference either. And I never send empty ink cartridges anywhere! ;)

But the original message wasn’t spam either as far as I can tell. Just something about Ginko balls. Anyone know what that is?

This story makes you wonder though if this is how people are trying to fight spam…

Window Live Mail exposes a button to remove yourself from a mailing list (as seen in the Channel 9 video). This makes a lot of sense and is based on the mail headers. They were present in every single message:

List-Post: <mailto:news@threeringranch.org>
List-Help: <mailto:news-help@threeringranch.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:news-unsubscribe@threeringranch.org>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:news-subscribe@threeringranch.org>

It would be great if every mail program exposed this. Although spammers would figure this out and probably abuse it.

Pretty bad day for someone in Hawaii. Go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a better day.

One last hint: Your last email was sent to a list again (new name, same story though). BCC the list next time instead of asking people not to reply to the list.

Update 11/28/06: The inevitable happened! About 10 people replied to the entire list thanking for the apology email! I’m still laughing! They were all pretty positive along the lines of:

I just wanted to say please keep me ON the list.

It’s a shame some people haven’t learned the art of patience & Internet 101.

But not everyone appreciated all the replies to the apology:

I didnt mind the first emails, accidents happen and it’s no biggie to me. But could everyone please stop replying to the appology email, or if so please reply personally. I am getting all of those too and it does get a little irritating after a while.

Lesson to be learned: BCC is good!

P.S. I still have no clue how I ended up on this list…

Update 12/02/06: I just received their December newsletter including a 2.7 MB pdf attachment. Needless to say that I unsubscribed. I still don’t know how I ended up on that list though.