Email Notices
I consider myself fairly well-versed when it comes to security, but I must confess that I am completely baffled by the notices at the end of email messages. Here's one I saw recently:
"Important Notice: This email is confidential, may be legally privileged, and is for the intended recipient only. Access, disclosure, copying, distribution, or reliance on any of it by anyone else is prohibited and may be a criminal offense. Please delete if obtained in error and email confirmation to the sender."
Does anyone actually read these things? A couple of interesting points:
1) This particular notice was at the end of a message sent to a mailing list. A mailing list. So apparently the mailing list was prohibited from distributing the email to the rest of the mailing list. Although perhaps since the list was the intended recipient, that is okay. But is it confidential? This particular list has an archive on the web. Hmmm, they got past the first hurdle on the technicality, but this next one is a bit tougher.
2) How on earth would I know if I obtained it in error - it was addressed to me. They sent it. Ok, I'll admit that sometimes I know things are sent by mistake, but still... just doesn't seem right.
3) I like the whole "reliance" angle - so if Bill Gates had this notice at the end of his emails, he could have told the courts they were committing a criminal offense by relying on all of those emails.
4) Doesn't the whole deletion thing mean something like "I made a mistake, now you have to fix it for me, or you may be criminally liable"?
Who can tell me with a straight face that any of this would hold up in court?
9:22:04 PM 
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