Useless and ridiculous email legal notices
We’ve all seen it now. Some lawyer at some company decided it would be a good idea to append legal disclaimers and notices at the end of each email. Now everybody is doing it. They usually read something like this:
Privileged and Confidential
Blah blah blah
Disclosure to 3rd parties other then the recipient is strictly prohibited
Blah blah blah
You may not forward, redistribute, or make public the contents of the email.
Blah blah blah
If you received this email by mistake you must immediately delete it
Blah blah blah
Whatever happened to the email in YOUR inbox being YOUR property?
Thanks to some legislatures and the Internet Mail Consortium, operators of mail gateways, can give notice to spammers that their mail server cannot be used for delivering spam. But I see a better use for the SMTP banner:
220-xxx.xxxxx.xxx.x ESMTP Exim x.xx xx Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:48:30 -xxxx
220-NO UCE. You are hearby notified that ANY email sent here becomes
220 the property of the recipient and CAN be redistributed
220 publicly to ANYONE without consent or notice. This notice supercedes
220 any legal claim appended to the body of emails delivered here.
-higB
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Those sorts of notices infuriate me, at least as much as any email can (i.e., not very much). They’re utterly useless, as there’s no law backing them up. No, actually, they’re worse than useless, as they bloat messages with explicit and implied insults against the recipient, who naturally did nothing to warrant such abuse by the sender.
As a result, I tend to react in a contrary manner when I see such notices. I may flame the sender in return. Or I may post the message in public, with or without sarcastic commentary. Those outcomes are especially likely if the message was misdirected to me in the first place.
It’s better if people who send email I see don’t include such worse than useless legalistic boilerplate… even though that happy state would deny me some cheap entertainment.