This message is for the sole use of the intended recipient. If you have received this message in error, you will immediately destroy it, cut out your tongue, and slash your wrists.
Do e-mail confidentiality notices serve any real purpose? Do they actually have any legal standing? And if not, why do so many people -- particularly lawyers -- routinely append them to all the messages they send out
The confidentiality notices certainly seem to have what the lawyers would call contract formation issues. "I don't see how a person who receives a stray message can be deemed to have entered into a contract obligating her to keep the message confidential because there's a notice at the end to that effect," wrote another reader. "I've never used confidentiality notices on e-mail or faxes. I figure that if you don't do it automatically, you'll forget it on the ONE message/fax that goes astray. And if you do it automatically, a court will rule that it's meaningless because you put it on non-privileged, non-confidential messages. And a lot of messages that are clearly personal and trivial have such notices on them. You cannot unilaterally impose a contractual obligation on someone by giving him a piece of paper that says by looking at the piece of paper he is bound by the terms stated in it. But just in case it would be binding on the recipient, I'll stick in right here a notice that by reading this message you owe me dinner at Nick's Fishmarket next time you're in Chicago."
If you do get an e-mail by accident, you are of course barred from doing some things by law - identity theft or trade secret violations, for example - whether or not there's a confidentiality notice on it. But can you be obliged to follow the sender's instructions in an unsolicited message? Spammers would certainly love it if that were the case. If lawyers reduce their legal risk one iota by attaching a confidentiality notice to an e-mail, why wouldn't it be so for scammers as well, particularly since those two groups aren't entirely mutually exclusive?
If you read this column by mistake, you are hereby required to post your comments below or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.
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