Group email goes awry in Cd'A schools

COEUR d’ALENE — Almost everyone who uses email, text and messaging apps knows the truth about group messages. They can be useful, but often, they are an annoyance.

Thousands of middle and high school students in Coeur d’Alene experienced the negative side of group messaging Monday when a student was able to access a group email address unintended for student use.

The student sent an email message at 8:35 p.m. that went to 8,714 middle and high school student email accounts.

The email’s subject line said “Hello” and the message included several lines of gibberish.

“Over the next hour or so, about 90 students replied to that original message, and most were sent to ‘reply all,’” said Scott Maben, the school district’s director of communications.

The replies, Maben said, were generally, “Wow,” “Hey,” “Hello,” “Stop replying, I can’t delete this,” “Take me off this list now,” “Who is this?” and “Why?”

“Clearly, students found this to be confusing and annoying as the messages began to fill up their inboxes,” Maben said.

School officials, who believe the student who sent the first message stumbled upon the name and address of this email group through an auto-fill feature while creating another email, shut the group email account down around 9:30 p.m.

Maben sent an email to parents and guardians Tuesday morning advising them of the situation.

“We have changed the access setting for this group. In addition, we are retracting all of the emails that students received from this email group,” Maben wrote.

He told parents the school district is reviewing all other group email addresses to ensure the settings are appropriate.

“We apologize for the improper student use of our email system,” he wrote.

Maben told The Press the account was set up years ago and used to pass on security settings from Google to the web filters the school district applies to student accounts.

“When it was originally created, we missed checking a box that would have restricted access to the group,” Maben said.

There is no indication the student, whose name is not being released by the school district, was acting with malicious intent when the original email was sent, he said.

“Still, this incident is an opportunity to review with this student our expectations for responsible email use,” Maben said.

Those expectations are outlined in a Student Technology Use Agreement all students must read and sign at the start of each school year.