# I don't think we all need to know your password. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 1, 2003, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424 "2003-08-01T19:32:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/21 "2003-08-02T20:09:08Z")
This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I once saw. Email from Administrator (to entire company): Please refrain from frivious email traffic. It bogs down the network. From Dilbert (CC all users): I agree! ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Tiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Mama\_Tiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Tiger)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/22 "2003-08-02T20:28:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pencilpusher \* > \*\*One of my pet peeves is people that, no matter HOW many times you tell them, continue to send 20 forwards a day. They insist on filling the inbox with shit you really DON’T care about. I’m PAGAN people. That means that I (personally) get offended when you send me CHRISTIAN based emails. I’ve TOLD you ALL NUMEROUS times to stop sending me that crap. Can’t you keep your religion to yourself?!?!? I do it for you so PLEASE extend the same respect to me. \*\* That’s where my favorite email feature, filter to deleted items, is so wonderful… ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/23 "2003-08-02T21:44:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Orbifold \* > \*\*So, my friend from Microsoft told me this story several years ago about a developer working on Outlook who was trying to test the mailing-list features. He particularly wanted to test how Outlook stored and managed really big mailing lists. So he took about ten thousand names at random from the company directory and made them into a mailing list. > > Unfortunately one of those random employees was cleaning out his e-mail and discovered that he was subscribed to a mailing list he didn’t recognize. What did this second employee do? That’s right. He e-mailed everyone on the list asking “Hey, what’s this list for?” > > Chaos ensued. A few percent of the people who got the message immediately replied to all, saying “Yeah, me too. What’s this list for?” Then another few percent, wondering why they suddenly had hundreds of “me too” e-mails in their inbox, replied to all to ask “Why am I getting all this e-mail?” Then some more people replied to all, saying “Stop replying to all!” Millions of messages, flying back and forth. Microsoft’s corporate e-mail server was brought completely to its knees for a day. > > They made t-shirts to commemorate the event. They had the name of the mailing list on the front and “me too!” on the back. Go figure. \*\* “Bedlam3.” I remember it well. What made it all the more enjoyable was the fact that we have an internal website that lets you add or remove yourself from any Alias AUTOMATICALLY. Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/24 "2003-08-02T21:54:19Z")
I’ve often thought that a couple of features should be added to Outlook and perhaps the AOL client (which, together, must be responsible for a great majority of all e-mail?) 1. When you click “Reply All”, if there are more than an administrator-configurable number of addresses in the “To:” list, you get a warning - something like, “You dumb ass. You are about to spam 75 users with your worthless reply. Do you really need ‘reply all’ ?” (or something a little more user friendly) 2. If you are BCCd on an e-mail, and you hit “Reply All”, the e-mail client should warn you: “Warning - you were blind copied on this e-mail, which means the other recipients do not know you received it. By using ‘reply all’, you will reveal to them that you received the original note.” I’ve had (not unintelligent) friends that I blind copied on notes, only for them to “reply all” and give the game away. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/25 "2003-08-02T23:04:50Z")
\*Originally posted by AngelicGemma \* \> \> \> \>\>\> \*\*I HATE that! Use the bloody delete button people! When will my friends learn?! \*\* \>\>\>\> \> \> \> \> \> \*Originally posted by lno \* \*\*(Actually, please _DO_ paste it into a word doc - that way if someone uses the preview pane in Outlook, it won’t hang the application for a year and a half…) \> \> \>\> \>\> \>\> \>\> Hey! I just got this really funny joke from a friend. I’m going to forward it to everyone and leave all of the previous headers intact because scrolling past a thousand lines of ```auto > > > > > > > > > > ``` is fun! \*\* Me too. ---
**Author:** ![julian64](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/aca169/32.png) [@julian64](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/julian64)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/26 "2003-08-04T08:22:42Z")
On the subject of unnecessary email traffic, here’s a true story… At a former IT company where I worked (which will remain anonymous. Hint: Mozart’s middle name), the whole company (around 600 people when I was there) was constantly inundated with “[license plate] lights on!!!” messages. Byline thought: there seems to be a negative correlation between the number of asterisks someone uses and their intelligence. It’s true!!! 😉 Anyway, I digress… Eventually, someone had A Good Idea: Hey! If we had a record somewhere of the names of car-owners against their license plates, we can send an email only to the one person it concerns! Good idea, shame about the implementation. Get this… You and I, we’d think “one spreadsheet or database stored centrally” right? Oh, no. No no no. This is what happened: A Bright Spark sent an email to all the directors, containing an attached Word document containing an empty table with two columns, one for names and the other for numbers. Our director’s secretary emailed the still-empty Word document to all of the director’s managers… and our manager got her secretary to print off the still-empty Word document, and go round the office handing the “form” to each and every individual to handwrite their details. Mind you, this is the same “manager” who hadn’t seen my important email because – get this – she had got her secretary to print off all of her emails and “yours must be somewhere in the middle of the pile”! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_great_unwashed/32/4791_2.png) [@The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/27 "2003-08-04T13:36:46Z")
Right, I kid you not… I work for a _large_ multinational distributed across many sites employing thousands. One day there was a fire alarm at SiteX (a drinks machine had started to smoke, or something), a particularly bright spark (hey! a pun!) though that they should email(!) everyone (not just the workers at SiteX but _everyone_) with the delightfully pithy message **pLEASE EVACUATE THE BUILDING!!!** Still brings a smile. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/28 "2003-08-04T13:47:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Seven \* > \*\*\*Originally posted by AngelicGemma \* > \> > \> > \> > \>\>\> > \*\*I HATE that! Use the bloody delete button people! When will my friends learn?! \*\* > \>\>\>\> > \> > \> > \> > \> > \> > \*Originally posted by lno \* > \*\*(Actually, please _DO_ paste it into a word doc - that way if someone uses the preview pane in Outlook, it won’t hang the application for a year and a half…) > \> > \> > \>\> > \>\> > \>\> > \>\> > Hey! I just got this really funny joke from a friend. I’m going to forward it to everyone and leave all of the previous headers intact because scrolling past a thousand lines of > > ```auto > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ``` > > is fun! \*\* > > Me too. \*\* Hey folks- [email stripper](http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) can be your friend, on those rare occasions when you get one of these annoying emails that has something you’d really like to send to someone. Makes that Delete button green with envy! ---
**Author:** ![DogMom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9c0ed/32.png) [@DogMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DogMom)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/29 "2003-08-04T14:29:35Z")
**Mercury** it was just a regular email from one of our customers; there was nothing to designate it as an “announcement”. **qts** , you’ll have to clear it with DogDad. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![easy\_e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/eb8c5e/32.png) [@easy\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/easy_e)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/30 "2003-08-04T16:08:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DarrenS \* > \*\*I’ve often thought that a couple of features should be added to Outlook and perhaps the AOL client (which, together, must be responsible for a great majority of all e-mail?) > > 1. When you click “Reply All”, if there are more than an administrator-configurable number of addresses in the “To:” list, you get a warning - something like, “You dumb ass. You are about to spam 75 users with your worthless reply. Do you really need ‘reply all’ ?” (or something a little more user friendly) > > 2. If you are BCCd on an e-mail, and you hit “Reply All”, the e-mail client should warn you: “Warning - you were blind copied on this e-mail, which means the other recipients do not know you received it. By using ‘reply all’, you will reveal to them that you received the original note.” I’ve had (not unintelligent) friends that I blind copied on notes, only for them to “reply all” and give the game away. :smack: \*\* How about adding that if someone CC’s more than x number of people (or has more than x number of people in the To: line), they get an idiot message. I hate it when people do this as: A-you’re giving my address to all of those people, and how do I know it won’t make its way to a spammer? B-when you have To: or CC: fields it chews up space, too. My freshman year of college, some fuckwit got an email saying she’d get $1 for every person she sent an email to. I don’t know how she did it, but she got thousands of university email addresses, and had them all in the To: field. It kept crashing my email, and I’m sure it wrecked havoc with the servers. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/31 "2003-08-04T16:12:26Z")
Yup . . . there was a email announcement that was obviously NOT meant for faculty accidentally sent to the faculty@ourbigfuckinguniversity.edu mailing list. The staggering number of reply-to-all’s saying “Hey, why am I getting this email?” crashed the network for half a day. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/32 "2003-08-04T20:13:18Z")
Slightly more (but not much more advanced)… if you’re on a mailling list and you’re going on vacation, please either unsubscribe before taking off or configure your fucking auto-responder! At least now, most of them do not respond to themselves (those were horrible, someone would write, the auto-responder would kick in and then once the response was received, it would kick in again. 600 messages telling you that “Sam is away until February 22”). But more likely than not, if I’m writing to the mailing list in general (instead of you personally) I don’t care where you are, nor who to contact in case of an emergency. And if someone else wrote the original message, I really don’t care. And I especially don’t care 12 times in a 24 hour period. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7feea3/32.png) [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424/33 "2003-08-04T21:59:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RadioWave \* > \*\*Amen and Halleluljah **DogMom**. > > I’m about to go ballistic over one of these “discussions” going on at this very moment. > > Manager (via email to department): I think we should buy product A. > dumbfark #1 (hits reply to all): I agree. Product A is good. > dumbfark #2 (hits reply to all): I like product B better. > [etc.] > \*\* What’s really awful is something like this: Manager (via email to department): I think we should buy product A. dumbfark #1 (hits reply to all): \>I think we should buy product A. I agree. Product A is good. dumbfark #2 (hits reply to all): \>\>I think we should buy product A. \>I agree. Product A is good. I like product B better. dumbfark #1 (hits reply to all): \>\>\>I think we should buy product A. \>\>I agree. Product A is good. \>I like product B better. Is product B the blue one? Manager (hits reply to all): \>\>\>\>I think we should buy product A. \>\>\>I agree. Product A is good. \>\>I like product B better. \>Is product B the blue one? No, product B is green. dumbfark #2 (hits reply to all): \>\>\>\>\>I think we should buy product A. \>\>\>\>I agree. Product A is good. \>\>\>I like product B better. \>\>Is product B the blue one? \>No, product B is green. Yes, product B is blue. People! I already have the exchange in my inbox! I don’t need a recap of your discussion _in every single email_! This is how emails get to be more than 20kb without any attachements! I guess the people at vBulletin decided to head this off, since the quote feature only quotes the first level. Amp > [@](#): > > Someone, somewhere in my company decided to update a database and needed to collect information. Easiest way to do that is to send out a company wide e-mail asking the questions they needed answered. They specifically stated that if the e-mail did not pertain to you to please ignore. So a few people answered him/her but instead of just replying to him/her they hit the “Respond To All”, making their response a mass e-mail. A lot of this could be avoided if people would just use the bcc option. I’ve received messages where the to: line was longer than everything else put together, including the message. I don’t need to know who else is getting the email. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-think-we-all-need-to-know-your-password/192424.md?page=1)