Annual tirade #422

[dsrtao]

Email disclaimers. Do not use. Bad idea. Your company looks foolish, not professional.

If you are an exception, you are a lawyer.

If you send one to a mailing list, it looks particularly stupid to have a "you must immediately destroy this information and report it to me" disclaimer.

If you are in sales, having "The statements and opinions expressed in this e-mail do not necessarily represent those of $COMPANY" at the bottom of your message looks really foolish. Yes, I mean you.

If your company is doing this, find out why. Persuade the person who made this decision to work for a competitor. Your company will prosper.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I wish. I think the person who made the decision is our CEO. I tried to talk some reason into other folks and got no traction.

And it's added at the mailserver, so I can't circumvent it. It even gets added to all internal email. I'm thinking of adding "please ignore all text below this email" to my .sig.

(sigh)

[dsrtao]

Have you pointed them at stupid-disclaimers
?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid pointing at an ugly site from six years ago will do little good...maybe we can find a more recent, polished article from the EETimes or something. ;)

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

It's not there for any persuasive powers it might have upon the recipient. It's there in case the message is part of a court case, and the prosecution tries to use the message to prove you did something on behalf of your company. The *lack* of the garbage disclaimer can be seen as a lack of due diligence. Sort of like if you don't fence your land, it's "assumed" that you're OK with random strangers trespassing on your land. :-(

[dsrtao]

I roll to disbelieve.

The prosecution says that your email of the 23rd clearly promises to pay one million dollars to the IRS by the end of the week. You say, ha! it doesn't count because I have this disclaimer that says nothing sent in email is the official position of the company, and also I had my fingers crossed.

Result: you owe a million dollars, plus interest, plus penalties, and probably court costs.

Case 2: the prosecution says that your salesperson's email of the 23rd to your customer constitutes sexual harrassment, and that since there's no stupid disclaimer at the bottom, your company obviously supports that.

You show the court the records of sending your salesperson to sexual harrassment training, your clearly stated policy, and the fact that immediately after receiving the complaint, you investigated, reviewed the incident, fired the salesperson, and sent a letter of apology to the complainant.

Result: your company is dropped from the lawsuit.

The only situation in which automatic email disclaimers make sense is a caution that when you talk to a lawyer, it's not Legal Advice unless you've already reached an agreement to get advice from the lawyer.

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

Case 3:
You're in casual correspondence with a (potential) customer, and you're not the person in charge of negotiations. However, the customer decided that your off-hand comment about a new potential feature is the reason why they bothered to sign on the dotted line, and the company's official decision to forgo that feature has cost the customer lots of time and money. They now sue because your email message, which had no disclaimer, was viewed as the official word of the company.

Case 4:
Flunkie send sensitive contract information to the wrong party by mistake, clicking on an external address in their address book instead of the desired adjacent address. Recipient now uses this disclaimerless information to do some insider trading. Absent that disclaimer, your flunkie writing from a company address with confidential information may suggest that the company itself was complicit in the information-passing.

These disclaimers are not (necessarily) primary protection in a court case, but also a protection against something like this seeing the inside of the court. They're additional discouragement against a plaintiff pursuing the case rather than dropping or settling. Never mind the publicity, which always hits page 1, while the retraction/correction is buried on page 12.

What bugs me the most about them, though, is their placement. When they're at the bottom, they don't protect anything. They need to be at the top, protecting everything below. While at the bottom the sensitive information has already been read. (This from a legal expert a number of years ago, so it may not be as valid anymore)

[dsrtao]

Case 3 is a contract case, in which the contract is going to be scrutinized, almost certainly according to the UCC article 2, and the warranties and representations clauses will be considered. At worst, your off-hand comment will be taken as an inducement to sign the contract, not part of the contract itself.

Case 4: how is this different if the disclaimer exists, but the defendant points to all the other email that sent from the company
which bears the same disclaimer but implicitly or explicitly tells the receiver to ignore said disclaimer? Because that's what's going to happen.

Using them on all email is stupid. Placing them at the bottom is stupid. Pretending that they ensure confidentiality is stupid. Hoping that they will keep you out of court is stupid.

And making the company look stupid is not very clever.

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

I'll agree that putting the disclaimer on every piece of mail is silly, unless you *never* have anyone speaking on behalf of the company via email. And at that point, why have email connectivity.

For better or worse, these disclaimers are the standard. You know the companies I deal with; every single one, without exception (as far as I can tell), uses a disclaimer of some form. I've heard tell (though I can't point you at a specific instance) where these disclaimers *have* tipped the balance. Doesn't mean it makes sense, doesn't make them right. It just means that they have a reason for being there. The *lawyers* I deal with aren't bandwagon types; they really do know their jobs and have reasons for doing the things.

But I still think they're stupid in reality. Sadly, the law is not reality.

[n5red.livejournal.com]

I can think of one mailing list where "you must immediately destroy this information and report it to me" would probably be a good idea. Or even, better, drop the "report it to me".

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

This is on every email I send at work:

NOTICE: This electronic message, including all attachments, is
intended solely for the use of the individuals or entity named above,
and may contain CONFIDENTIAL, PRIVILEGED and/or TRADE SECRET
INFORMATION. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby
notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this
electronic message, including any attachments, is strictly prohibited.

If you receive this electronic message in error, please notify me
immediately by telephone at (508) 481-6400

It annoys the hell out of me to see that on my emails. But we were collectively ordered to include that several years ago. I argued against it but lost.

You know, I wonder if anyone would even notice if I removed it now.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Or found similar sounding words which mean something different.

NOTICE: This electronic massage, including all attachments, is
intended solenoid for the use of the individuals or depravity named above,

[cellio]

We're required to use that sort of thing. Ours is a little less odious than many, but it's still stupid. I have no hope of persuading, or even identifying, the people who could change that decision; it's a big company that does a lot of government work.

I don't post to mailing lists from work, so I never have to let it leak out in public. I'd rather use my personal email address, accessed from home, so that (1) people can find me after I've left a particular job (if they save messages or find me in archives), and (2) I am clearly not representing the company. Oh, and (3): so I don't have to use Outlook for it.

All that said, while we were given a specific text to include verbatim, no one said we couldn't decorate it. Mine has an innocuous pair of <boilerplate> tags around it; someone else has formatted it to look like Pac-Man eating the dots.

[dsrtao]

don't post to mailing lists from work

That's a good move regardless of whether your company suffers from stupid disclaimer syndrome. Two more reasons for it: (4) so that you build up a reputation independent of your employer, and (5) so that you don't have to resubscribe to a thousand lists when your employer changes.