Jesper Frier
Certified Professional
Joined: 09 Sep 2006
Posts: 1925
Location: Stoevring, Denmark
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:23 pm Post subject: Email confidentiality notices |
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The confidentiality notice is an attempt to say that the content of the email is confidential and that it should not be read by anyone other than the intended recipient. Common sense dictates that adding this notice to the foot of the email is too late: If the notice is read at all, it will be read after the message.
There is no legal authority on the effectiveness of the notice in email messages; but that is not to say that it should not be used, provided care is taken in drafting it.
The disclaimer and the confidentiality notice are intended to serve different purposes. Thus, they are handled separately in eMailSignature.
 As Exchange/Outlook does not facilitate automatic posting of a confidentiality notice above the text of an email message, you need a workaround - and you use eMailSignature to include the text as a stationery.
The following wording would be appropriate above the message text:
| Jesper frier wrote: | | This message is private and confidential. If you have received this message in error, please notify us and remove it from your system. |
Continue to code here.
Some confidentiality notices begin, "This message is intended for the addressee only". This is misguided because any person who receives the email will likely only receive it because he is an addressee, albeit the sender may misspell the intended recipient's email address.
Do not take it for granted that your confidentiality notice can be relied upon, however much care goes into its preparation. As mentioned above, there is no legal authority on the value of these notices in email communications. When the notice is added to every email, there is a risk that a court would consider that the venom in your warning has been diluted.
The value of the notice is that, if the disclosure of the content of an email becomes a subject of dispute, it would be possible to point a court to the existence of the confidentiality notice and argue that the recipient should have known to not disclose the contents of the message.
Such notices cost nothing to include – so it's worth having them. Just be aware that they may be thrown out as ineffective. |
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