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Human Rights  » Tales of Email Misdirection

Tales of Email Misdirection

Article:

It's wise to remember how easily email -- this wonderful

technology -- can be misused and misdirected, sometimes

unintentionally, with serious consequences. Unless you are using

encryption, the privacy of your message cannot be guaranteed nor

the authenticity of your correspondent.

Consider the case of a man who left the snow-filled streets of

Chicago for a vacation in sunny Florida. When he reached his

hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick email, who was

planning to meet him there the next day.

Unfortunately, when typing her address, he missed one letter,

and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife

whose husband had just passed away. When the grieving widow

checked her email, she took one look at the monitor, let out a

wail, and fell to the floor in a faint.

At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this email

note on the screen:

"Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your

arrival tomorrow. P.S. Sure is hot down here."

What actually hurts here is that the email was not being

intercepted but rather, inadvertently directed to the wrong

location. The nickname feature in many mailers can cause

accidental emails being sent to co-workers instead of family

members, or vice-versa. It's a strange new kind of

miscommunication, where you can misdirect emails a dozen times

before lunch. At least with misdialed phone numbers it becomes

apparent after a few moments and you usually stop before saying

too much. With email, it is now possible to quickly send a

completely coherent message that is nonetheless nearly

incomprehensible to a mistaken recipient.

Bigger mistakes can come from an accidental "reply" or even

worse, "reply all" instead of "forward". A recent example would

be when a congressional staffer accidentally hit "reply all"

when intending to forward a comment to fellow staffers on a

"Support the Captive Primate Safety Act" email he'd received

from an animal rights group. The original email was supporting

legislation to prohibit the keeping of primates such as monkeys

and great apes as pets, and asking for co-sponsors to protect

not only animals but humans as well, as there are inherent

dangers in keeping such pets. The staffer's comment was meant to

be funny, and read: "Does this deal with those kids out in

Ohio(?) who were kept in cages?" However, this email went out to

the legislators behind the Captive Primate Safety Act instead of

being forwarded as an inside "joke", leading to a very sticky

political exchange.

Other instances of email misdirection puts organizations In

legal and/or financially risk, causing a number of compliance

issues. A 2005 Harris Interactive® for Fortiva poll, shows that

68 per cent of U.S. employees who use email at work have sent or

received email via their work email account that could place

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their company at risk.

While all these examples may be a good arguments as to why you

should disable the "reply all" function altogether, the fact

remains that the way a standard, unprotected email is sent out

is very akin to the mailing of a postcard. With the wrong

address attached there is nothing, not even an envelope, to

dissuade an unintended recipient from reading about, for

instance, the naughty things you did while in Vegas. Even worse,

the mistaken recipient can in turn "reply" and you could be end

up with unsolicited correspondences for the lifetime of that

email address.

Use it wisely, and email is indeed a wonderful tool. Email is

fast, easy to use and has become a cultural method of propelling

personal and business communication. The bottom line is this -

do not trust confidential information to email unless you are

using security such as encryption or rights management. Whether

it's due to misdirected email or breach of email etiquette, your

email could be exposing yourself to more than you know.

About the author:

Schwarz is the director of creative marketing at Essential

Security Software and is responsible for worldwide creative

marketing strategy and execution, corporate branding, and public

relations. Essential Security Software (ESS) is a provider of

document and email security solutions.

http://www.essentialsecurity.com