The Perils of e-mail

            The article “The Perils of e-mail” (qtd. in Varchaver: 2) by Nicholas Varchaver examines the use of e-mail in today’s society.  The author believes e-mail is the most important business technology since the telephone.  The benefits of e-mail are many but Wall Street investment firms and giant corporations have paid significant monetary penalties because of its use.

            There have been many instances were e-mails intended for private eyes have been leaked to the public.  In one situation an analyst of a major investment firm publicly rated a particular stock high but privately attacked the stock. As a result, the prosecutor had evidence, in the form of an electronic trail, of wrongdoing by the analyst.  The analyst was fired, tried, fined and the company also had to pay significant fines.

The use and tracking of e-mail has turned into a nightmare for big companies.  What can they do to safeguard their position and also effectively deal with a problem that seems to be a behavioral one?

Mass purging of e-mails seems to offer some benefits but not in completely eradicating all trace of e-mails.  E-mails that are forwarded to other parties, saved to hard drives or printed still exist even if deleted from the sender’s server.  They also exist on back up tapes and if the company is involved in litigation, the judge will expect all e-mails to be produced.  Failure to do so carries heavy fines and penalties.  

E-mail monitoring is another way for companies to keep track of their employee’s use of e-mails.  Corporations spend more money on monitoring e-mail than on software to block viruses.  Most monitoring software is designed to restrict access to pornographic sites or prevent spam. There are many ways to circumvent monitoring software, and companies have been forced to employ other methods.  One such method is having supervisors pre-review all incoming and outgoing messages.

Company policy regarding e-mail should be written and made available to all employees.  Companies should also mandate training for all employees in the proper usage of e-mails.  E-mail seems to be a problem for companies but the true problem is that we have not figured out how to live with e-mail and all its implications