quote:

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CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE:
This communication and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged inf information for the use of the designated recipients named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error and that any review, disclosure, dissemination, distribution or copying of it or its contents is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and destroy all copies of this communication and any attachments.

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To which I say, Eat Me! I mean, he screws up so now I have to notify him by telephone...I am now required to DISTROY his blunder? Some half-wit sends me UNSOLICITED email....HE screwed up directing his precious email to the WRONG person and all of a sudden he's dictating to ME all this phony legal mumbojumbo about what I MUST do and MUSTN'T do with it and what responsibilities I now have incurred because he's a slob and didn't take the time to address his email properly to the right recepient? And now he's got the cahones to dictate to me what I can and can't do with the crap he's sent me!

To which I say, "He buddy, go yourself." You don't want me to send your oh-so freakin important "confidential" email out to whomever I please? Then keep you damn email out of my In Box!

In case this guy hasn't heard, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRIVATE EMAIL. You've got "confidential, sensitive" content? Then get off your cheap lazy fat ass and send a First Class, Certified Letter" or a FedEx with a return signature if the contents are so damn For Your Eyes Only, because you know what, someone puts this fascist statement on the bottom of an email addressed to me that winds up in my In Box, then I might just post the damn thing on YouTube or better yet, Twitter it across the globe. I may just do my damnedest to "review, disclose, disseminate, distribute and copy it and its contents whereever the hell I freakin please.

Lawyers...what an ahole.

So am I wrong? Talk amonst yourselves.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-19-2010, 04:21 AM:
 
You are not agreeing to that contract if it is sent unsolicited, so I suggest you print out several copies and wallpaper a bus station with the e-mail. Call the sender by telephone (if the number is actually included) and inform him of which bus station he should visit.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-19-2010, 04:26 AM:
 
Now we're talkin! You never cease to edify me, Joe.
 

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Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 10-19-2010, 08:30 AM:
 
Frank,
I have to disagree with you on this. I have gotten a similar disclaimer at the end of some e-mails, but they are all from companies that I do business with. One good friend of mine has one on every e-mail sent to me. We are usually sending contracts, drawings, and specs back and forth for upcoming jobs. I don't see what your problem is? I read it once and ignore reading it every time I get an e-mail. It's at the bottom of the page and I'm done with the message.

I get E-mails from my mom's AOL account which are junk mail. Probably sent to everyone in her contact list. When I asked her about it, she says she never sent anything to me. Which she doesn't e-mail me unless I'm out of the country.

Rick
Hamilton Technical Services

This message is intended for Frank only, anyone else who reads it must format their hard drive and never look at this website again!
 

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Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 10-19-2010, 09:40 AM:
 
I agree Frank. I would send it to everyone I knew....and then some more people.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-19-2010, 10:47 AM:
 
Richard, you don't find it absurd that someone or some company has concluded that by the mere fact of their sending you an email, they they can then obligate you....no, COMPEL you to notify the sender immediately by telephone and destroy all copies of this communication and any attachments. Sure I can ignore it. That's not the point. It's the very idea that they think that somehow THEIR action can impinge on what I have to do with their crap.

That's the equivalent of someone dumping their garbage on your front lawn and then leaving a list of legal bs that you are required to do and not do with it. In Brooklyn we call that chutzpa, the loose translation being: some pair of balls.

The officious, fascist tone of it doesn't bother you? It sure does me.

Now I understand that this makes sense when applied to inter-office emails -- let them threaten each other all they want with legalese, but then they should be just as officious about telling their employees to delete that statement from their emails going out to non-employees because such an email may wind up in the In Box of some old grouch in Brooklyn who hasn't had his cup of coffee and before you can say Eat Me, he'll be plastering it all over bus stops and then calling the president to tell him WHERE TO GO to see it.
 

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Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 10-19-2010, 11:00 AM:
 

quote:

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If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and destroy all copies of this communication and any attachments.

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quote: Frank Angel

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Lawyers...what an ahole.

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I come from a family of lawyers and have many friends who are lawyers and judges. Do you think they go to see a movie you show and at the end say "man whoever showed that film must be a prick"?

Rick.

Hehe if you read this fast enough it rhymes ...prick...Rick
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-19-2010, 11:39 AM:
 
Frank, you're complaining about that but you haven't said anything about those A-holes who attach their "V card" or an image of their company logo physically to each email. That makes searching for REAL attachments almost impossible.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-19-2010, 11:41 AM:
 
Those notices are just a case of "C.Y.A."

If you notice, it says "If you received this in error." I would say that about 99.9% of that kind of email is not "received in error" so what's the problem?
 

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 10-19-2010, 12:15 PM:
 
Lots of companies automatically append disclaimers like that to all their outgoing email. It's a lawyer-legal-CYA thing for the sender.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-19-2010, 12:19 PM:
 
What Brad said. No one wants to see your company logo.

Also, I am starting to see a bunch of "consider the environment before printing this message" taglines. WTF? I have no intention of printing your message anyway, and I would really rather not be lectured.

As for the disclaimer thing, all indications that I have seen are that it doesn't have any legal value. Email is by definition not private and not secure . If it's confidential, don't send it in email without encrypting it first.

Also, .signature files are supposed to be no longer than four lines, with a proper "-- " (dash-dash-space) separator above. I hate one-line messages with fifteen-line signatures that do not use the proper separator and which include the same name and email address as in the header, a company name (like I can't figure that out from the domain name), four different phone numbers, a fax number, and a physical address (as if I am likely to reply to an email message with a letter).

Argh.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-19-2010, 02:00 PM:
 
Some of the stuff people tag onto e-mail can be pretty annoying. I'm more put off by stupid background images that obscure the type as well as silly font choices.

The legal disclaimers don't bother me much; I understand it is a CYA issue in case the mail was accidentally addressed to the wrong person (that sort of thing is very common). As long as the disclaimer and any other formatted garbage is easy to delete from a reply letter it's no big deal.

I do expect people to follow copyright law. If I send a customer a design for a sign, billboard, vehicle wrap, etc. he damned sure better observe the work is copyrighted and he has no business shopping the design to competitors. The other guys can damned sure start from scratch just like I did.

quote: Scott Norwood

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Also, I am starting to see a bunch of "consider the environment before printing this message" taglines. WTF? I have no intention of printing your message anyway, and I would really rather not be lectured.

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That kind of notice targets a certain segment of our population who insist on printing out everything on paper before bothering to read it.

I have an aunt who is this way. It's annoying and very wasteful. She uses the excuse, "I don't like to read it on the computer screen." My aunt does this with most of her e-mail, all the digital camera photos she takes or receives via e-mail. If there was a way for her to print out a video and keep the video motion intact she would do it. I'm never showing her how to do frame grabs.

The printed digital camera photo thing is also a common annoyance at work. A customer will bring in a letter sized print of a digital camera photo expecting that to be an acceptable source image. IT ISN'T! More than half of the image's dynamic range is destroyed when it is turned into a print. There is no way to make a scan of that print and have it equal the color balance of the original file. So give me the original freaking camera file! Not a print of it!

 

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Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 10-19-2010, 02:09 PM:
 

quote: Scott Norwood

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Also, I am starting to see a bunch of "consider the environment before printing this message" taglines. WTF? I have no intention of printing your message anyway, and I would really rather not be lectured.

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quote: Manny Knowles

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I auto-print all inbound emails anyway. I'm still tied to pen-and-paper.

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