Well folks, as much fun as it has been sharing stories of email ineptitude with you on this blog, the time has come to say farewell.
It’s not goodbye forever, though. From now on, my thoughts on email blunders, overload, misuse, and general failure will be posted on the Business in General blog over at Bplans.com, along with posts about, well… business in general.
You can still share your email fail stories with me at jay@emailfail.com.
See you on the BIG blog!
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I started writing my year end Email Fail wrap up post several weeks ago.
I got as far as the title. Don’t you think The Year in Email Failure is catchy? Then I sat down to get my post written and discovered that Chris Hoke’s Ten Worst Email Gaffes of 2009 beat me to it.
I’m on board with most of Hoke’s picks. But I thought I’d go through the Email Fail archives and revisit some of my favorites.
Check these out:
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UPDATE:
Last week, Research in Motion (RIM) experienced some kind of problem that
<gasp>
interrupted email delivery to BlackBerry users in North America.
You’d have thought somebody interrupted the delivery of air, by the reactions seen on Twitter. Seems a few hours without access to email on their mobile device is enough to send some Crackberry addicts to the edge.
Now, I’m sympathetic to a point. I mean, nobody wants their email disrupted. But it’s not as though all email was unobtainable — it just meant you had to sit at a computer, rather than at Starbucks or on your toilet, to get your messages.
Update 12/23: Crackberry Fail Part 2 just a few days later. I’m starting to worry about some of my addict friends. I hope they survive.
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I got more fun spam today, and though I had sworn off spam-related Email Fails for a little while, I couldn’t resist. Because this one highlights an issue that I find really annoying in legitimate emails as well.
It’s the multi person/multi-address Email Fail.
In this particular instance, the email is from acmeorders@gmail.com. And the name associated with that email address is, let’s say Roger Smith. The Reply-to address is a FranklinRobbins@hushmail.com. So that’s two different domains, two different people’s names. So far.
Now we move to the body of the email, where the reader is instructed to ”contact me at my other email address, Ralph@yetanotherdomain.com.”
And finally, the email is signed by Hilary Somethingorother.
Four people’s names, three addresses.
One irritated email recipient.
It’s super annoying to get emails from addresses you’re not supposed to reply to. Or emails with multiple addresses. Or emails that have the address they want you to reply to in the body of the message, instead of just sending their email from that address. Or emails that have so many different people’s name associated with them.
Who’s sending the message? What address should I reply to? Make it easy for me, people, this is ridiculous!
Just for kicks I sent an email to all three email addresses. Immediately after sending, I got the bounce message that the Reply-to address was full.
Perfect.
I’ll update if I get any results from the other two email addresses. But don’t hold your breath.
Update: I got a reply from a totally different Gmail address (YummyFrank, very professional), signed by Sasha, From Luz. Addressed to somebody else, and telling me to respond to Lisa@. I love these guys.
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Can PayPal tell the difference between emails it sends out and phishing emails from scammers trying to trick users into providing sensitive information?
Looks like the answer is no.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitchster/ / CC BY 2.0
Blogger Randy Abrams works for an online security company. His ESET Threat Blog is filled with information about how to avoid hacking, malware, and other such computer security threats. It’s obviously a subject he knows a lot about.
So when he received a legitimate email from PayPal that contained a link to the PayPal login page, he wrote to them. His point was that people in his industry have been warning email users to be wary of emails containing links to banks and other financial institution’s home pages. The landing pages are often spoofed to look like the real site, and when users log in, the scammers have their personal information. So he wanted PayPal to know that it was a bad idea to include the link in their email, because it could be confusing an already confused population.
PayPal wrote back, in part:
Hello Randy Abrams,
Thanks for forwarding that suspicious-looking email. You’re right – it was a phishing attempt, and we’re working on stopping the fraud. By reporting the problem, you’ve made a difference!
There are only a few explanations for how PayPal decided its own email was phishing.
I’m betting on #1.
But #3 would be funnier.
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I have an email address that I never use. It’s on a few Web pages, but I’ve never used it to create any accounts or as a contact address for anything at any time. In fact, I pretty much only check it these days to see what entertaining spam might appear.
This arrived in my inbox yesterday:
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(Account.Update.@msnn.com) on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 09:59:45
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
: We Here at MSN, are sorry to inform you that we are having problem's
with the billing information on your account.(XBOX Live, MSN Hotmail, Verizon,)
We would appreciate it if you would go to our website and fill out the
proper information that we need to keep you as an
MSN member.Please Update your account information by visiting our updates web site
below.
<a href="http://members.lycos.co.uk/verizoncellphone/msnlive"> verizon updates</a>
Steve.
Updates Center
Account Team.
.550268889550268889
Seemed like a run of the mill phishing email, complete with weird punctuation, random use of uppercase letters, and a ‘close but no cigar’ From address — Account.Update@msnn.com. Anyone with a half a clue would see that extra N and know it was fake, right?
The failed attempt to embed the link in the body of the email is pretty funny too — I mean, even if somebody didn’t catch on that this was bogus before they saw that, they’d know that Verizon would not use a lycos.co.uk domain, right? Right?
Of course, I went to the site. Here’s what it looks like. Note the misspellings, and the sheer gall of these people to ask for two credit card numbers, a state ID (driver’s license?) number, social security number, mother’s maiden name, bank account numbers, email address and password…
It saddens me that somebody somewhere has probably lost a lot of money because of this.
Update: I reported this site to Lycos Tripod yesterday, and when I checked it today they had already taken it down.
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Email takes too long to respond to.
Your inbox is too full.
You don’t have the time to get to it all.
Email is taking over your life.
Ok, let’s say for a minute that I feel bad for you (which I don’t. There’s a delete key, people! If you have too much email, get rid of some of it! Or organize it. Or manage it differently so it doesn’t destroy you). I was prepared to throw you a bone by sharing this weird little website I came across recently.
I found three.sentenc.es and thought – that’s odd. Not useful or clever, really. Just odd. The entire site simply says:
The Problem
E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.
The Solution
Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.
three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.
As I started formulating my snarky comments about this, I noticed (in tiny type) the next line:
* See also: two.sentenc.es, four.sentenc.es, and five.sentenc.es.
Click any of those links and you’ll end up on an identical page, but with the “threes” on the original page replaced with the appropriate number.
How lame! You have your little manifesto, but you can’t even commit to a maximum number of sentences? I thought the idea was odd, as I said, but I could have at least admired the austerity of it. If you believe three sentences is the right number, great. Have it. Take a stand.
But then to make the same claim about two, or four, or even five? C’mon now… make up your mind. Looks like it’s a personal policy to change your personal policy pretty easily.
I also have to laugh at the idea that letters are too hard to count. I’m guessing that’s why they stopped at five sentences.
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ClimateGate ’09. You’re wondering how Email Fail has failed to comment on ClimateGate, aren’t you?
I’ve been away from work. Sarcasm takes a holiday.
The uproar about the hacked emails, which allegedly show that scientists manipulated data to exaggerate the effects of human activity on climate change, has been interesting. But it’s been more political than email-related.
One side says the emails are damning evidence of scientists misleading the world for years. The other sides says the emails were obtained illegally by hackers paid to undermine the Copenhagen climate summit going on this week and that any ‘damning’ bits were taken out of context.
I say hacking email is bad.
And the timing is suspicious.
And I’m not taking sides.
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It was funny back in July when I wrote about how the Muncie, Indiana fire department had just discovered email, right? Small town, behind the times, ha ha ha.
But San Francisco is a whole other world. You’d think they’d have to be light years beyond Muncie
You’d be wrong.
The San Francisco police force is 2,400 officers strong and has 10 police stations, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Recently, two (yes, TWO) of those stations got email and voice mail for the first time.
You read that right — at the end of 2009, only two of 10 San Francisco police stations have voice mail and email for each officer!
Of course, the cops are human too. According to the article
Shifting San Francisco’s police to the new technology has come with challenges. Some officers have had a tough time keeping track of their passwords; many already have to remember about a half-dozen passwords for other police programs. And some officers’ accounts have gotten bombarded with messages from residents, while others have seen only a trickle.
The article goes on to say that before this big push into the present, each SFPD station previously had ONE email address. If somebody had a message for a particular cop, it was posted on a (physical, probably cork) bulletin board. Or people sent them actual MAIL!
Now, I get that police departments existed just fine before email came along. But still, it seems like SUCH a useful tool for a city wide police department. Considering that just about every other small business or organization that has electricity has had email for years, it’s just shocking that the SFPD was this behind the times.
Now we just have to hope they can remember their passwords…
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You write one blog about an email sex scandal and the next thing you know, you’re finding them everywhere.
A friend of mine brought this one to my attention today (get that man a can of Spam!). It’s another one that doesn’t require much of me, beyond posting this link to the thread about the student who wanted to earn extra credit the old fashioned way.
Not much more to say.
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