‘Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.’ –G. Orwell
The email might contain “privileged, confidential and/or proprietary information,” they are told. If it landed in their inbox by error, they are strictly prohibited from “any use, distribution, copying or disclosure to another person.” And in such case, “you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.” (…)
Email disclaimers, those wordy notices at the end of emails from lawyers, bankers, analysts, consultants, publicists, tax advisers and even government employees, have become ubiquitous—so much so that many recipients, and even senders, are questioning their purpose. (…)
Emails often now include automatic digital signatures with a sender’s contact information or witty sayings, pleas to save trees and not print them, fancy logos and apologies for grammatical errors spawned by using a touch screen. (…)
Some lawyers say the disclaimers have value, alerting someone who receives confidential, proprietary, or legally privileged information by accident that they don’t have permission to take advantage of it.
Others, including lawyers whose email messages are laden with them, say the disclaimers are for the most part unenforceable. They argue that they don’t create any kind of a contract between sender and recipient merely because they land in the recipient’s inbox.
It’s largely untested whether email disclaimers can hold up in court and at least one ruling on the matter was mixed.
Boilerplate language attached to every email dilutes the intention, some say. For instance, when every message from a sender’s account is tagged with “privileged and confidential,” it might make it difficult to convince a judge that any one email is more private than another.
