Top 10 E-Mail Mistakes and Mishaps in 2006

WebKnowHow
Friday, January 5, 2007; 05:27 AM

For most companies, e-mail plays a mission-critical role in day-to-day business operations. While providing great value, the spontaneous and casual nature of e-mail often results in misuse that can be comical to outsiders while costly to the enterprise.

MessageGate, Inc., a leader in practical e-mail governance, has compiled a list of 10 unforgettable e-mail blunders from 2006 that surely will be haunting the sender in the New Year.

“New regulations, increasing litigation and continued reliance on electronic communications have driven smart organizations to take a good look at their e-mail policies and governance,” says Robert Pease, vice president of marketing for MessageGate. “We hope companies will make a New Year’s resolution to take practical steps toward better e-mail governance. Companies that don’t take proactive measures run the risk of showing up in the headlines in 2007.”

The list:

10.         Politics - as usual

            A lawyer at the Small Business Administration was fired
            after sending and receiving more than 100 e-mails through
            his government computer in support of the Green Party in
            California.

9.          "But I wasn't being paid!"

            An intern sent all of a company's sensitive IT diagrams to
            her personal Gmail account so that she could have samples
            of her work for the future. This included every server,
            the applications running on those servers, the IP
            addresses and a multitude of other sensitive network
            security information. This information is now stored and
            indexed on Google's servers.

8.          "Change the toner ... please!"

            A company discovered its top e-mail sender was not an
            employee, but the copy/fax machine. Tens of thousands of
            emails sent over a period of days alerting various users
            of low toner were universally ignored; meanwhile, mail
            servers were strained and folders were filling up.

7.          I bought how many houses?!?

            A financial services company discovered employees were
            disclosing customers' personal financial information
            through unsecured e-mail as they sought to close loans by
            sharing credit reports directly with applicants via
            e-mail.

6.          Biting the hand that feeds you

            Morgan Stanley asked two bankers and the firm's former
            chief economist in Asia to leave after they distributed an
            e-mail critical of Singapore. From the e-mail: ``Actually,
            Singapore's success came mostly from being the money
            laundering center for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and
            government officials. Indonesia has no money. So Singapore
            isn't doing well.''

5.          A costly pack rat

            A financial services company learned that a system
            administrator was testing the systems responsiveness and
            load by cramming the e-mail network full of test messages
            (to the tune of 80-90k per day). In addition to causing
            huge system bottlenecks, the firm's archiving policy was
            saving terabytes of test mail per year and archiving it
            for an undetermined time.

4.          Live, from W-R-O-N-G

            Recognizing the unusual messaging patterns of one
            employee, a financial services firm discovered that one
            employee was running a disc-jockey business at the expense
            of the corporate server. The large music files he was
            e-mailing to potential customers were being archived for
            an indefinite period.

3.          He said, she said

            Thomas J. Perkins, the former HP director who unearthed a
            series of scandals at HP, held the upper hand in his
            public-relations battle with the chairwoman, Patricia C.
            Dunn, until his callous e-mail was forwarded to the media.

2.          How do you say 'oops!' in German?

            Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's largest bank, lost its spot
            among the underwriters of Hertz Global Holdings Inc.'s
            initial public offering after an employee sent
            unauthorized e-mails to about 175 institutional accounts.

1.          Thanks, but I no longer need the job

            The video resume of Yale senior Aleksey Vayner was sent
            from a financial institution that he was applying at to
            YouTube. With the Internet world mocking Vayner, he is
            threatening to sue numerous institutions including UBS and
            YouTube.