N.C. park officials inadvertently served up a helping of holiday spam with an electronic greeting that allowed people to reply to all 47,000 people on the state's Parks and Recreation email list.

The staff spent this week assuring people that no one got access to individual email addresses or other personal data.

"We regret and apologize for the problems that were created," Assistant Director Don Reuter said Thursday. "We were wanting to wish people a pleasant time, and we created some aggravation. That's unfortunate."

Shortly before Christmas, Director Lewis Ledford sent an email to park visitors that blended holiday greetings with information about park services, such as the "Pocket Ranger" mobile app. He had done the same in 2010 without incident, Reuter said. But this year, someone failed to disable the "reply-all" function.

On Dec. 24, someone replied with a complaint about a proposal to raise the state gas tax. "Stupid dumb taxes ... you know where you can put them ... up yours ... I don't need any information about state parks," it concluded.

Many on the mailing list were not pleased.

"I'm not on this list for political rants. ... How did this get on here?" one person replied.

"When visiting your parks last year, I never agreed to have any of my private information made public, nor did I request email updates from your agency," said another. "Since my email includes my full name, you have placed me at risk by including it in a mass email. Furthermore, you have violated my privacy. I am outraged and demand to be taken off of your mailing list!"

Reuter said the parks department disabled the reply function as soon as staff realized there was a problem, but replies to replies bounced around for several days. The reply worked like Listserv, he said; a sender could reach the whole group but did not have access to the list of addresses. Nor was any other personal information at risk, such as credit cards used to book sites, he said.

Reuter said the division won't send any more group emails unless the staff is sure they can't generate mass replies.