Your E-mail Will Tattle-tale On You

Zdnet has an interesting article about business e-mail. In court cases, discovery requests are made for all documentation pertinent to a court case. This includes all electronic documents and e-mail.

"So what?" You say.

Well, I'll tell you what. Having run a very large network myself, I grew tired of unjamming e-mailboxes full of jokes, attachments, and other nonsense that filled up my logs and my server space. Even though I asked nicely - several times - people would think that the messages I sent asking them to curtail non-business use of the e-mail system was not applicable to them. I didn't ask for it to stop completely, just to slow to a more reasonable level, and to not trade the same stupid 'fart-pager' commercial 2000 times which took 10GB of storage on the e-mail servers at a time when 10GB used to be a lot of space. So, I imagine if I had gotten a discovery for certain e-mails that pertained to a court case from our attorneys I would have done the same thing as the Network Managers do in the article.

I would have sent them the whole damn message store.

Less work for me to go through the millions of messages looking for specific items. Easier to send it off to the lawyers to look at.

So what if it embarrasses someone, I had asked nicely many times for them to "knock it off" and they ignored me.

So now all those potentially career-threatening messages are out in the open. Remember that e-mail you sent about that jerk of a boss you hate? Or the new "meal" you had at the expense of your boyfriend getting out to everyone? (Yes, this was a hoax, but it could be real.)

Think about it people. If you want to send junk mail around, keep it at home, or use servers outside of your network. And don't sign e-mails with your work credentials. Sheesh. Use your brain.

Or write a letter. But if you are like me, you've forgotten how.