Reply-to-All Abuse

Protect Recipients and Reduce Unnecessary Email Volume

When used incorrectly, the Reply-to-All button can lead to an email storm that consumes storage and bandwidth. Aside from annoying a lot of people – all at once – Reply-to-All abuse can wreak havoc on employee productivity and, in extreme cases, slow business down to a screeching halt as inboxes fill up.  Archiving systems and email stores can be consumed with unwanted messages.

While most Reply-to-All gaffes are more contained, they can have far-reaching consequences. An overloaded messaging system can impact Service Level Agreement (SLA) commitments. Employee time is wasted as individuals spend time reading, responding to or deleting the Reply-to-All banter. A huge amount of wasted storage space on the email server and the legal compliance archiving system.

The following email best practices can help reduce the problem without impacting business operations:

• Limit the number of recipients in an email message or require confirmation when sending to a large list. (Executives and selected personnel who regularly must contact large employee groups may be exempted.)
• Prevent most employees from replying to messages that include mailing groups or distribution lists. Use mailing group controls.
• Encourage the use of collaboration technologies, such as instant messaging and team software, such as IBM Lotus Quickr and Microsoft Office SharePoint, for conversations.

Permessa Email Control! with Permessa Email Policy Enforcer automatically makes best practice recommendations based on email use and can help identify reply-to-all abuse patterns.  An optimal limit on the number of recipients can be placed on all messages or just those from certain senders.