Laughing Matters: E-Mail Confidential

Some people can never be too self-important or too officious, so it must have been like a gift from heaven to all those folks when some unnamed martinet came up with the e-mail confidentiality notice.

If you're a normal person, you completely ignore these legalistic proclamations at the bottom of e-mails. And that's an appropriate place to find them, because they seem intended to cover the sender's behind with authoritative-sounding boilerplate about how this is CONFIDENTIAL information that MUST NOT be shared, and if you are someone other than the INTENDED RECIPIENT, you are OBLIGATED to notify the sender IMMEDIATELY, destroy this e-mail and then PUT YOUR EYES OUT.

Usually, these notices accompany e-mails that bear the top-secret news that the office windows will be washed next Thursday or the attached photo is the cutest ever of a monkey on a surfboard.

It makes you wonder what kind of warning might be appropriate for content that's truly sensitive, such as the top-secret Air Force nuclear-missile launch codes you e-mailed to Marge in accounts receivable. Perhaps something along the lines of, "If you even suggest that you may have HEARD of the POTENTIAL GLOBAL DESTRUCTION facilitated by the contents herein, you will IMMEDIATELY be deported to an area of rural Indiana that doesn't even have CABLE, and your children will be DENIED ADMITTANCE to any college, cross my heart and hope to smash your mouse. If you are a foreign national or a member of a known terrorist organization, including an association of real estate agents, YOU MUST NOT READ ANY OF THIS."

Now here are some questions for you: Have any of these warnings of dire consequences ever stopped you from forwarding an e-mail to an unintended recipient? Or caused you to warn someone that the photo of the monkey is confidential and privileged information? Have you ever actually called the sender and confessed that a message reached you in error? If you can answer "yes" to any of those, answer one more question: How long have you lived in a confinement facility for the criminally gullible?