EMail Horror stories

E-mail can be a very efficient way of distributing information but mistakes can be embarrassing, if not disastrous

As Hallowe’en approaches here are the top five e-mail horror stories we have seen and the ways to avoid them happening to you.
Telling all your resellers and partners who they are competing against
An organisation sent out product information and put everyone’s names in the “Cc” box. The address list took up most of the e-mail but the company also revealed all their partners to each other.
The moral: create a group list or use “Bcc” for the names.
A client who preaches sustainability and efficiency and sent nine attachments amounting to 11MB
There were no instructions about what to do with them and much of the information was available on their website.
The moral: send a link rather than the entire file.

Forwarding an e-mail which compromises the recipient
A mentor wanted to send an e-mail to the manager’s boss but sent it to the manager himself.
The moral: check the entries in a chain before forwarding.

Sending highly confidential information to the wrong person
In one organisation Simon Wills is the outlook support executive and Simone Wills is global head of legal services. Simon often sees highly sensitive information meant for Simone.
The moral: check the recipient’s address carefully.
Sending an attachment which contains all the edits and comments others have made
The client sent these as part of a tender exercise. In this case there was no damage but in others, secret financial information has been revealed.
The moral: check that you have cleaned the file and removed all edits before sending.