Reply to all
A county council was recently fined £100,000 for two serious incidents where they’d faxed personal information to the wrong people. These were highly sensitive cases, one involving child sexual abuse and the other included details of care proceedings. I was more surprised that anyone still used a fax as much as that they’d managed to send to the wrong people.
Sending to the wrong person can be quite easy using modern technology. I’ve texted to the wrong person and occasionally clicked reply when I meant to forward and email. This was only a problem when I added slightly negative comments about the original sender in the forwarded email. Then there have been several memorable ‘reply to all’ mistakes where someone replies to an all-staff email and we all get to read the response.
I’m not sure how much confidential or otherwise sensitive stuff we communicate, however some emails have a footer along the lines of
This e-mail may include confidential information and is solely for the use by the intended recipient(s). If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately. You must not disclose, copy, distribute or retain any part of the email message or attachments.
Now that seems to be shutting door after the horse has bolted.
Until I had to use it, I believed the Outlook ‘recall an email’ was a failsafe, however it doesn’t appear to actually retrieve the email, but instead just sends another email saying the previous message is being recalled… which draws attention to the original one, and usually makes me read it to find out why it is being recalled.
And while I am on the subject of email, please don’t tell me to think green and not to print out your email… I wasn’t going to anyway!
I wonder, given the current plight of our nationals in Libya, whether someone, somewhere, is busy trying to recall the emails which approved the destruction of our aircraft carriers, our Harriers, our Nimrods, our ability to do much of anything ;-)