The Scourge of E-mail Disclaimers
I received an e-mail from someone I don’t know asking me to publicize an event among my colleagues. The event might have been of interest to a few of them. At the bottom was the standard confidentiality disclaimer. The disclaimer gave me an easy way not to share the event. I thought it was all pretty amusing.
Event organizers and publicizers, check your disclaimers.
The e-mail disclaimer:
"The information in this transmittal (including attachments, if any) is privileged and confidential and is intended only for the recipient(s) listed above. Any review, use, disclosure, distribution or copying of this transmittal is prohibited. If you have received this transmittal in error, please notify me immediately by reply email and destroy all copies of the transmittal. Thank you."
May 24th, 2006 at 6:01 am
I’ve been looking into this a bit (in my endless search for the Great Answer to ‘Should we have a disclaimer?’), and find that several press agencies are complaining about experiencing exactly the same sort of problem: they are getting press releases with legal notices (aka disclaimers) attached, instructing them to not pass the information contained in the email to anyone else. A daft thing…
Cheers,
B