[Infowarrior] - Yahoo Groups hit by massive duplicate e-mail bug

[Richard Forno]

Yahoo Groups hit by massive duplicate e-mail bug
March 29, 2007 9:02 AM PDT
http://news.com.com/2061-10811_3-6171648.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&sub
j=news

A major bug in Yahoo's mailing list software has deluged in-boxes around the
world with duplicate messages.

Yahoo Groups confirmed the glitch in a brief statement on Wednesday evening.

CNET News.com reader David H. reported in e-mail that the problems started
early on Wednesday. He said: "What is incredible to me is that 17 hours
later, Yahoo has neither solved the problem nor rolled back their 'upgrade'
-- despite hundreds of messages from irritated group managers, some of whom
have been automatically unsubscribed from their own groups by Yahoo's
anti-flood-detection software."

Comments posted on Yahoo's official blog said that messages often were
arriving faster than users could delete them, with up to 25 duplicates
arriving for each original message. Some mailing list operators responded by
enabling emergency moderation, and others reported additional glitches such
as messages not appearing that should have. Over 1,500 comments were posted.

In a revised statement released at 8 a.m. on Thursday, Yahoo said: "A fix
was pushed at midnight (PT) that we believe has resolved the problem for
messages submitted after that time. However, it is possible that some users
of some groups may have continued to receive duplicates of messages that
were posted before midnight."

It was not immediately clear whether the glitch was due to Yahoo announcing
earlier in the day on Wednesday that it would open its e-mail interface to
outside software developers.