ILLINOIS - Computer Glitch Causes Big Game Problem with e-mail

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Title: Big Game causes small problem with e-mail Source: Daily Herald

BY NATASHA KORECKI Daily Herald Staff Writer

Lottery officials have one suggestion to anyone still receiving e-mails about the Big Game electronic newsletter: Click on the delete button.

The newsletter was temporarily out of commission Saturday after a computer glitch - beginning with a high number of hits during last week's record jackpot - led to an e-mail nightmare for subscribers.

The problem started when unusually high level of traffic to www.theofficialbiggame.com - at one point about 100,000 hits per hour - led the site to be moved to a larger server.

Once traffic died down Saturday, the site was moved back to its original server. However, when it returned to the smaller server, important codes restricting e-mails on the electronic newsletter were no longer intact.

This allowed thousands of e-mails intended only for Big Game officials to be copied to subscribers.

"What I think happened, some people tried to unsubscribe to the newsletter. They hit reply, and somehow, we believe that certain e-mails on the public list were broadcast to everybody," said Edward Scarborough, director of Public Affairs of the Virginia Lottery, which creates and designs the Big Game Web site.

The situation snowballed, as those who mistakenly received the e-mails, replied explaining the mistake, but those e-mails also were copied to everyone.

Scarborough said during large jackpots, Big Game players subscribe to the newsletter for up-to-date information then try to unsubscribe once they find out they did not win.

He said not everyone on the list was affected, but he returned Monday to find about 700 e-mails.

"We're encouraging people to simply delete them," Scarborough said. "A lot of people have been calling and saying, this is a virus. I can tell you this is not a virus."

http://www.dailyherald.com/d/newsfront/local/localcook/dhhtm/2rest.htm

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