Bank customers who responded to an online survey have their in-boxes flooded with hundreds of unwanted email messages.
The bank, which services most of the Northeast, apparently conducted the survey to gauge consumers' interest in online banking. Individual email addresses were forwarded to everyone on the mailing list, resulting in hundreds of unsolicited email messages.
In a letter of apology, Fleet Bank vice president Laura Cleary wrote that the barrage of email messages that subscribers were subjected to was due to a "server configuration error on the part of the vendor supporting the online survey."
However, Tim Choate, president of Tennessee-based Edge.net, which was hired to process the mailing list by a Fleet Bank subcontractor, said the spam was not the result of an error. According to Choate, his company complied with the instructions it received from the subcontractor: to create an open mailing list.