Press Room
E-mail 101: Tips to make sure your messages don't come back to haunt you
By Cynthia Hubert -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:01 am PDT Sunday, July 9, 2006
Story appeared in Scene section, Page L1
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann probably assumed he was making a private joke when he described a colleague as "dumber than a suitcase of rocks" in an e-mail message.
Big mistake.
Last month, his comments about fellow TV personality Rita Cosby showed up in the New York Daily News, and Olbermann had some explaining to do.
In a world where personal missives can instantly tour the globe with a click of the "send" or "forward" button, others have suffered far greater consequences. When they get into the wrong hands, indiscreet e-mails can cost people jobs, clients, business deals, even marriages.
"People are enormously careless about e-mail, until they get burned," said Atlanta attorney John Mayoue. Electronic messages, Mayoue said, have become "the best, most foolproof" way of outing cheating spouses in divorce cases, and they can cause all kinds of other problems for unsuspecting senders.
According to an annual survey by the technology firm Proofpoint, nearly 40 percent of companies have staffers whose job it is to read the electronic messages of other employees, and more and more workers are losing jobs for violating e-mail policies. Incendiary e-mails have most famously been used to prove criminal cases against corporate lions such as Enron founder and former CEO Kenneth Lay, who died last week.
Earlier this year, a producer for ABC News was suspended after sending an e-mail bashing President Bush. An employee of the Golden State Warriors basketball team was fired for inadvertently shipping a racially insensitive e-mail titled "Ghetto Prom" to the team's entire media distribution list. Former Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher, who had been married for 50 years, was forced to resign after his sexually explicit electronic communiques with a female colleague surfaced.
If you want to make sure electronic messages never come back to bite you, said Mayoue and others, assume everything that you write is being monitored, copied, printed, forwarded and sent out to the wide world of computer users.
"Never, ever write anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't want on the front page of the New York Times," said Suzanne Bates, a corporate communications specialist and author of the book "Speak Like a CEO, Secrets to Commanding Attention and Getting Results" (McGraw-Hill, $21.95 hardcover, 240 pages). Unless you install special software that prevents recipients from forwarding your message, it might as well be on a billboard in Times Square, Bates said.
Even if someone deletes it.
"E-mail leaves electronic records all over the place," said Lance Ulanoff, an editor for PC Magazine who has written about electronic etiquette. "When you delete it, it's not really gone. It just creates space that can be written over," and savvy IT types can easily retrieve it.
All the more reason why people should avoid sending e-mails when they are upset or angry, he said.
"Never send an e-mail when you're in an emotional state. That's a terrible mistake," said Ulanoff. "You can't always properly convey emotions the way you can on the phone or in person," and things can get misinterpreted.
"Even worse, if you're in a rush or not paying attention, you might mistakenly send a truly angry or venomous e-mail to the person" you're slamming, he said.
Ulanoff has received a few of those misdirected e-mails in his own inbox.
"It's OK, though," he said. "I have thick skin."
Some browsers, particularly those that automatically fill in commonly used e-mail addresses after the writer enters one or two letters, make it easier to send messages to the wrong person, Ulanoff pointed out.
Before you send, Ulanoff advised, always stop and read what you've written. Then, at the last second, type in the recipient's address.
Within the legal field, e-mail has spawned a cottage industry of specialists capable of identifying and producing electronic messages that can be used to prove infidelity, character flaws and even crime, said Sacramento attorney Paul Hemesath. "E-discovery is a huge new field," he said. "We use computer forensic experts in all kinds of cases."
E-mailers seem to have a false sense of security about the technology, said Hemesath. "People have known forever that you don't keep handwritten notes that are incriminating," he said. "But they seem to be less careful with e-mail. It's just kind of a black hole to most people."
In divorce cases, Mayoue said, "the good old days" of hiring private detectives to prove infidelity are long gone. "Now we can capture photos and videos and someone's exact words on e-mail," he said. "It's the most compelling evidence we have in domestic-relations cases. It's the most graphic proof of infidelity that we have today. We get a lot more admissions because people know they can't go into court and lie."
Although computer privacy is protected by state and federal laws, he said, judges can grant orders allowing someone to retrieve e-mail information as legal evidence.
As more and more of us suffer the consequences of misdirected e-mail, software developers and other companies are busy finding ways to prevent senders from losing control. Eric Rosenberg, former litigation manager for Merrill Lynch, now heads a consulting group dedicated to teaching companies the do's and don'ts of e-mail. Another firm, Echoworx, has created technology that stops anyone other than the addressee from opening an e-mail, and prevents it from being forwarded or altered. It also eliminates the cut-and-paste option.
In a press release, Echoworx brags that people who use the system "will never fear the send button again, and corporate raiders, gossip columnists and nosey colleagues will once again have to find another way to get their information."
No doubt the gossips will succeed.
But with a little bit of care, you can reduce your chances of being embarrassed, or worse.
First, accept the notion that someone is probably monitoring your electronic communications, especially if you're using a company e-mail account. Proofpoint, which recently surveyed 300 companies about their e-mail practices, found that almost half of employers regularly check the contents of the e-mails their workers send.
"I have a colleague who wrote a rather unflattering diary about her boss," recalled Bates, the communications specialist. "She stored it in a company computer, and her boss found it while looking for something else."
Yikes.
"There's a kind of complacency in the workplace, particularly with people who have been with the same employer for a long time," she said. "Longtime employees seem to believe there's a privacy that just doesn't exist."
Rosenberg, the former Merrill Lynch lawyer, lays out the "seven deadly sins of electronic communications" to his current clients. The "sins" include using company e-mail for personal use, assuming that the delete button erases the e-mail trail, and failing to think about how an e-mail would look in the public media.
For a good lesson in how not to use e-mail, look no further than the ABC producer, John Green, who e-mailed a colleague during a 2004 presidential debate that Bush "makes me sick," among other unflattering remarks. The e-mail was leaked to the New York Post, and Green was given a monthlong unpaid suspension, not to mention the untold humiliation.
Minefields abound, said Bates. But despite the inherent dangers, no backlash against e-mail appears to be developing. It's apparently too late for that.
"There's no way to put that genie back in the bottle," Bates said.
E-MAIL TIPS
Author, consultant and former Yahoo executive Tim Sanders offers the following top tips of e-mail etiquette:
- Never say no: "E-mail is for yes, maybe, passing on information of answering a question. If you're going to say no, pick up the phone."
- Don't CC Dad: "Try to limit CCing your boss or parents. The person who you are sending the e-mail (to) can become rather resentful."
- Don't send e-mail with "hot eyelids": "Never send an e-mail when you're mad. Touch your fingers to your eyelids and if they're hot, put the e-mail into the drafts box and revisit once you've calmed down."
- Stop replying to all: "Erase the 'reply all' from your e-mail. Take the time to think who the e-mail really needs to go to."
- Consider the time: "If you are a boss, don't send company e-mails throughout the night. If your employees see you working late, they will feel they have to as well. This could cause a very resentful workplace."