This article is more than 1 year old
FedEx helps deliver THOUSANDS of spam messages DIRECT to its Blighty customers
Don't worry Wilson, I'll do all the paddling. You just hang on
Fed-up FedEx customers in the UK were hit by an email storm yesterday, after a sad sap at the delivery company mistakenly hit the reply-all button on a daily alerts mailing list.
Inevitably, it was then besieged by jokers, spammers and idiots replying with the request to be removed from the list.
Reg reader, Nick, who flagged up the gaffe to us, said that FedEx's blunder could easily have led to the distribution of viruses across its mailing system.
He told us:
The “spam” seems to now have stopped, but we’ve had an endless amount of “self promotion” from small businesses. Fine, but it does somewhat get in the way of trying to spot real emails for those of us that are one-man-bands that already have too many emails!
Meanwhile, the cockup was highlighted by scamps on Twitter who were entertained by the email storm:
Even Wilson's getting fed up of this #FedExSpam !! pic.twitter.com/19lY0RYUcr
— Luke Hassan (@Turkishpride86) October 20, 2014
If I actually sent the number of packages that I am alerted to by "fed ex in my spam box" my middle name would be amazon. #fedexspam #salty
— Jill C. Frese (@angiliereva) February 13, 2013
#FedexSpam my favourite of the morning! Lol pic.twitter.com/ZHk44e723v
— Debra Dolan (@doodleberrydebi) October 20, 2014
#FedexSPAM This was our favourite from Procast Foundry! FedUp not FedEx pic.twitter.com/ADkXB1zkUE
— Rainbow (@rainbowfsltd) October 20, 2014
By mid-morning on Monday, a customer service bod at the company had urged people on the mailing list not to "'reply to all' to any FedEx UK daily bulletin emails."
The firm added in a statement to The Register:
"FedEx regrets the inconvenience caused to its customers by the service update email sent earlier today which inadvertently led to recipients receiving a large number of further email responses.
"We have taken actions to correct the situation as quickly as possible and have instructed customers on how they can unsubscribe from the list."
The FedEx saga is the latest email storm to have hit the inboxes of thousands of netizens.
Earlier this month, sysadmins at the University College London (UCL) battled a crippling email storm, after spam messages were sent to nearly 29,000 people on an all-student mailing list.
Networking giant Cisco has form in this area, too. ®