Call it an inauspicious beginning for a firm that specializes in technology planning for the banking industry.
Late Friday afternoon people on the mailing list of GonzoBanker, an e-mail newsletter full of hip and flip observations about the financial services industry, received their weekly installment, as usual. But this time they kept receiving it, and receiving it, with personal messages not intended for everyone's eyes appended.
One subscriber shared the details of his new job (not knowing, of course, that they would be seen by GonzoBanker's 1,000 or so recipients), and another subscriber confirmed a golf date. Others begged to be removed from the e-mail, and one wag submitted the observation: "Houston, we have a problem."
In all, 29 versions of the e-mail were sent to subscribers' boxes before the plug was pulled.
The newsletter and the GonzoBanker.com Web sites are run by a consulting firm called Cornerstone Advisors Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz., a one-month-old spinoff of the Phoenix consulting firm M One Inc.
Steven P. Williams, the managing director of Cornerstone Advisors, said the problem, which lasted for only 30 minutes, was neither a hacker nor a virus. The company uses a third party to maintain its e-mail distribution list, he said, and the parameters of the list were changed temporarily so that anyone who responded to the e-mail would inadvertently respond to everyone on the list.
"We're just trying to figure out how the parameter got changed," said Mr. Williams, who appears on the GonzoBanker Web site in a black Thin Lizzy T-shirt. "We have taken steps to make sure that never happens again."
Mr. Williams said it was, well, a bummer for his firm, which specializes in advising banks with assets of between $500 million and $5 billion, but he vowed that the newsletter would continue to be published. The strong reaction the matter seems to have elicited "just shows you how active people are with e-mail," he said.
