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Mon, Dec 1, 2008 16:37 EST

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Posted by: Meridith Levinson in Best Practices Topic: Personal ManagementBlog: Career Connection
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The following 10 phrases draw more attention to your surreptitious e-mail activity than they do to conceal it, and though they seem harmless, they could put your job and career in jeopardy, especially during this recession.
We've all done it: Dashed off an e-mail or instant message in which we shared with a co-worker confidential information about a layoff or bad quarter, trash-talked a boss or squawked about a hair-harebrained management decision.
Knowing we were typing something that we should have kept to ourselves, some of us might qualify our e-mail or IM with one of the following 10 statements, to underscore the sensitivity of the message and to cover our butts:
However, such efforts to circumscribe the sloppy e-mails and IMs we send are misguided, says Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora, a provider of e-discovery software. In fact, the phrases listed above draw more attention to us and our surreptitious e-mail activity than they do to conceal it or to protect us, she says, because those are the very phrases investigators, compliance officers, lawyers and HR staffs use to identify bad corporate behavior. (Charnock developed the list of 10 things you should never write in an e-mail or IM, above, based on e-mails and documents her company has analyzed for clients.)
"Everybody uses e-mail in ways that are sloppy because it's so easy and convenient," says Charnock. "But it can cause trouble. Writing 'Delete this e-mail immediately' is a marker for some content that by your own definition shouldn't be there."
What kind of trouble can these statements get you into? Big trouble: You could get fired if your employer finds out you've shared confidential information over e-mail or IM, says Charnock. Even if you've just used your e-mail to share what you think is a funny forward or to let off some steam about a manager or co-worker, you could get canned for that too, adds Charnock, especially if someone else has filed a sexual harassment or hostile work environment claim against you. Then, that "funny" e-mail you sent or the e-mail in which you let off some steam could be used as evidence against you.
In 2004, for example, PNC bank fired two women for forwarding seemingly innocuous joke e-mails over their company's network.
"Most people think, 'I'm not breaking laws. I'm not committing fraud or stealing from the company. I'm just doing what normal employees do, just bitching and moaning,'" says Charnock. "But if the compliance guy brings your manager into it, you can get fired right there."
If an e-mail you send gets flagged by your company's e-mail monitoring software, that might give your employer more reason to snoop through your virtual paper trail, says Charnock. "If a cop wants to follow you long enough, he'll find a reason to give you a ticket," she
Absoluteley... however, any executive who's ever used or considered saying any of these things in a digital communication is probably in the wrong position. Even if it doesn't immediately impact you, most corporations archive all email for potential investigations.
I guess I should have paused for thought before forwarding this article as an email to 10 work colleagues!!
That was a pretty lame list. All 10 are virtually the same. That was pathetic.
Hi Louis,
The 10 statements resemble each other for a reason: Because people use slightly different language to communicate the same ideas (e.g. 'I shouldn't be telling you this' or 'This is secret information,' etc.). The point is, e-mail monitoring software looks for all of those kinds of phrases to identify suspicious activity. Even though the statements in the list communicate some of the same ideas, they are among most common phrases that appear in e-mails where people share information they shouldn't be sharing.
I hope this explanation makes the list seem less lame.
Thanks,
Meridith
Meridith has a good point - emails can leave a trail of bread crumbs that lead right back to your desk / cube. However, what the Enron case showed was that lots of people had gotten the "all emails are saved" message, but somehow they had missed the second part of the message: "now all IM's are saved also".
For some reason, we seem to treat IM's as being more temporary - when we shut the conversation window, what we wrote is gone, right? Actually no, your best bet is to assume that everything gets saved these days.
What was that old rule? Oh yeah, "If you wouldn't want to see it on the front page of the New York Times, then don't write it down..."
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