Microsoft blocks the bulk email response feature to 'save' businesses

The protection feature of users' email inboxes from 'email storm' will be updated on Office 365 software as well as Exchange Online service.

'Email storm' occurs when hundreds or even thousands of people respond to an email thread that was previously sent because someone forgot to put other users' email addresses in the BCC or send them to a list. The book is incorrectly configured. Block Reply All feature (Reply to all email addresses in the previous list) will eliminate 'nightmare' when the mailbox continuously receive non-important (or irrelevant) information to a Personal and especially useful for large organizations.

According to TheVerge , the feature was initially implemented to detect 10 emails that responded to all more than 5,000 recipients within 60 minutes. 'We collect customer usage and feedback data over time to understand the issue and will adjust and enhance the' Email Storm 'Feedback (RASP) feature to bring more value to Office 365 customers, 'said Microsoft's Exchange team representative.

'Email storms' due to feedback to all recipients have been a problem in small and large businesses for decades. Microsoft itself also had a scandalous incident in 1997 and was called by the name 'Bedlam DL3 incident'. At that time, about 25,000 people in the attached list constantly responded to the email for everyone, creating 15 million emails accounting for 195 GB of data. The problem overloaded Microsoft's Exchange mail server. The company then has to release a feature to limit the recipients of messages in Exchange to control future incidents.

Even so the company suffered similar cases. Last year, a notice on GitHub triggered an 'email storm' to thousands of Microsoft employees. In March, several thousand company employees were discovered using Reply All in an email thread (but it was neatly processed within 30 minutes).

The RASP feature will be available for 4 consecutive hours from the time it is first activated (automatically), enough time to prevent people from sending feedback to all about email content unrelated to them. However, RASP seems to be for Microsoft employees only.

'People are people no matter what company they work for. We have seen the first version of the new feature reduces the impact of 'email storms' within the enterprise,' the company representative added.