The e-mail servers of legendary asset manager and hedge fund proponent Harold Evensky were hit with a virus recently, causing a flood of traffic and dramatic “reply-to-all” responses from some recipients. The virus was apparently triggered by an April 26 invitation sent out by Evensky’s firm, Coral Gables, Fla.-based Evensky & Katz Wealth Management. The “unsubscribe” address provided in the invitation triggered all other recipients--an AIN reporter among them--to be blind copied on unsubscribe requests. Hoping to be removed from the list, several recipients tried to unsubscribe in turn, which of course only compounded the problem: “You have put my email address in your email and I am now receiving emails from everyone who is asking to unsubscribe,” wrote one recipient. “Please fix your email and next time DO NOT INCLUDE EMAILS IN ANY OF THE FIELDS!!!! I will probably receive 100’s of emails now and people will have my email address!!!!!!!!!!! This is inappropriate. YOU MUST TAKE ME OFF OF YOUR LIST!!!!!!”
“Instead of watching the American Idol, I am sitting here, continuously deleting emails to stop my server overflowing,” complained Jim Otar of Rogers Communications.
“DO NOT SEND ‘PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS LIST’ messages anymore,” wrote Daniel Ades of Horn Eichenwald Investments. “We know that no one wants to be in the list, no one is emailing BCC, but PLEASE stop replying. Ok, hope mine will be the last.”
It wasn’t:
“Speaking for everyone on your list, we were all really looking forward to attending your event,” wrote Michael Axman, a lawyer at Adorno & Yoss. “But our computers crashed as a result of being bombarded with blind copies of emails from everyone who has replied to you to be uninvited. Now, unfortunately we all need to work during the event so we can afford to pay the MIS personell [sic] who have to fix the problems you caused.”
“Is there somebody on this list that is a class action lawyer so we can consider filing a claim for having to delete dozens of messages tonight stemming from the first incorrect email?” asked Scott Kornspan, a managing partner at Black Srebnik Kornspan & Stumpf, the firm whose clients have included Rush Limbaugh, William Kennedy Smith and others.
Nobody responded to this question. Finally, Evensky himself chimed in, after which the flood of emails ceased:
“We are aware of the virus like problem with this mailing and are working to determine it source,” he wrote. “PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND to the original e-mail as it will result in additional mailings.”