Do not tell anyone about this press release

PR people need to read what they send out. Can you image a press release going out to inform the world, yet contains the following harsh warning to keep it quiet:

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system.

Yup. Pretty much every day, press releases are sent to me about which I cannot talk. Even when they are sent by firms also boasting they won "2011 Communikations Agency of the Year." Who I cannot name, because the information is confidential and intended solely for me.

Heh. The wording of the keep-it-quiet-Buddy threat is identical, no matter the source, meaning one person wrote it, and then hundreds of firms disseminated, distributed, and copied it.

Oops. Then there's the vexing delete-this-email problem. If the policy of your agency or firm is that all emails must be kept for X number of years for archival and legal reasons, then you cannot erase accidentally-received emails.

Finally. The warning is at the very bottom of the email, where people are unlikely to see it. In any case, I love it when I get emails not meant for me, especially ones that talk candidly about, oh, certain people. Happens a couple times a year. I read them and enjoy them even more than my daily dose of 'LOL Cats'.

Hint. Do not implement policies that cannot  be enforced.

Comments

[Matthew West]

These pieces of verbiage are attached to emails as they pass through corporate outgoing mail servers. The people sending the emails do not write the notices themselves, have no control over the attachment process, and never actually see the confidentiality notices unless someone responds responds to the original emails. If you think it's silly for a company to attach confidentiality notices, that's a valid position. But don't blame the people sending you email. They have zero control over the process.

[Alex Schreyer]

These notes annoy me, too. Have they ever been legally challenged?

I can imagine that these sentences have no value beyond being a polite request. After all, I believe it is the case that the recipient has taken no action to get into a binding relationship with the sender by simply opening an email.

[Ralph Grabowski]

I suspect the statement is about as binding as me sending back an email, saying "Send me all your cash."

[Steve Johnson]

Tens of thousands of visitors to my blog every month "agree" to terms that include:

"By viewing, visiting or linking to this site ... agree to ... send Me ... photographs ... of You engaged in some ridiculous, amusing, controversial and/or illegal activity."

http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/terms-of-use/

My terms may be only slightly more outrageous than some of the terms we're expected to "agree" with before using our software or various web sites, but surely they're as binding as these silly little email footers.

The lawyer who wrote the first one could sue all of the companies that are infringing his copyright. Maybe that's the plan? A giant email chain-letter hoax with the potential for a massive payout at the end if it. Genius.

[R. Paul Waddington]

Read Steve's terms a long time ago and, for my money, they treat the process with the humour many un-acceptable/stupid terms & conditions deserve.

On a more serious note: if those types of terms were moved to the top of a document the game changes considerably.

Many of the letters I have written of a controversial/pointed or sensitive nature have my terms, either, on an opening page or with sufficient space between them and the body text making it obvious they should be read first and state non acceptance means read no further.

Most if not all my letters, to vendors and their legal representatives, relating to the licencing issues I raise use this method and it is not surprising just how seriously those recipients treat the conditions contained.

There is a light (humorous) side to these discussions but when one needs to be serious or taken seriously what I do is very easy to do, is effective and has the teeth needed to ensure enforceability.