AOP apologises for rogue email flood fl'flood'

A 'significant' proportion of the association's membership received on average 150 error or duplicated messages from Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The problems began when the association sent a bulk email - a common practice of sending one message to all email addresses in a system's address book in order to save time - to its members regarding the VAT situation on April 6. The AOP said it had successfully sent two such messages earlier this year. However, last week some recipients' ISPs were forwarding responses, sometimes more than once, to all recipients to whom the original email had been addressed. Error messages generated by out-of-date addresses were then also sent to all members. Although no members have asked to have their e-mail addresses removed permanently, some demanded a temporary halt until the situation was resolved, which the association said has now occurred. Head of communications at the AOP, David Craig, said: 'We are very sorry that many of our members have been put to great inconvenience and annoyance by this. We will continue to investigate the root causes of the problem to see what lessons can be learned. 'Our advice to members has been not to reply to any of the rogue emails, but to delete them. We have had experts thoroughly check our own server and systems and those of our ISP and made it clear that no problems were found. We will not use the members' email facility again until we can guarantee its security.'