Be careful who you email
Last updated 13:34, Wednesday, 01 October 2008
It’s great, just a twitch of the finger and a click of the mouse and your message zings electronically to its target within seconds.
Sometimes, you don’t even have to type in an address, you just hit ‘reply’.
Of course, the down side of this great technology is that with one hasty click you can make an idiot of yourself almost immediately in five different continents.
You can look an absolute pillock in your office, lose your job and if you’re really unlucky, hit the national and international headlines.
IT programmer Ray Tomlinson sent the first email message in late 1971.
I’m certain he had absolutely no idea the fun – and trouble – his brilliant new scheme would go on to create.
He said: “The test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them. Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or something similar.”
Emails about sex and politics seem to be the biggest disaster areas.
Most of the sexual messages can’t be repeated in a family newspaper.
But the most (in)famous political message was probably that sent by Transport Secretary Stephen Byers’ special adviser Jo Moore to colleagues as the World Trade Centre fell on September 11, 2001.
She tactfully emailed colleagues that it was a “good day to bury bad news”.
She had to apologise after the email became public and was later forced to resign.
An email message cost Conservative Cumbria county councillor Tim Stoddard his position as leader of the authority and his party control of the county council.
He sent a message ordering that deputy leader Joan Stocker be stripped of her cabinet responsibilities for finance and performance because of irregularities over accounts.
Although no cash is missing, the mistakes ruined any chance the council had of improving its lowly two-star performance rating from the Audit Commission.
Liberal Democrat leader Mrs Stocker said the errors had nothing to do with her and claimed she was being made a “scapegoat”.
Her group ended its power-sharing agreement with the Tories that had ruled the council since 2001, allowing arch-rivals Labour to take control.
Councillor Stoddard insists he did the right thing when he hit ‘send’ on his computer screen – but didn’t expect such a result.
He said: “I don’t regret it. It is still something I would do again, given the circumstances.
“It is unfortunate that the repercussions went the way they did, who would have thought?”
Another political classic on a national scale involved Treasury press officer Robbie Browse who sent an email to some friends shortly after returning from a trip to China.
He made fun of Chinese people’s eyes, only he accidentally copied it to his press list, containing 83 leading national newspaper journalists. When he realised his boob, Mr Browse sent out a recall of the email, but by then the damage had been done.
His apology stated: “My job is to email out press notices and I regret that I have accidentally sent a personal email to you.”
Some of the most notorious mailings are listed in the book Great Email Disasters by Chas Newkey-Burden (£7.99, John Blake Publishing).
When BBC Five Live signed up football commentators Andy Gray and Jonathon Pearce for the 2002 World Cup, executive editor of BBC Sports News Graeme Reid-Davies jokingly emailed a colleague saying: “I think they’re both c--p.”
Unfortunately, he accidentally copied his message to 500 members of the BBC sports staff - including Gray and Pearce.
Devon schoolgirl Claire McDonald was the subject of a series of unsolicited emails – containing top secret information from the Pentagon.
She was accidentally added to a round robin list by a navy commander.
One of the messages was offering advice to the UK on how to prevent secrets from being leaked.
Another classic involved Charles Allen, the chief executive of ITV, sending a boastful email to his staff after the death of Mike Baldwin on Coronation Street led to massive ratings boost.
His message read: “R.I.P Ken Barlow”
It used to be so much easier with letters, by ‘snail-mail’.
You would rough out your message, then write or type it out, then put it in an envelope, address it, then take it to the Post Office or post box.
At every step there was plenty of opportunity for second thoughts and to double check whether it was the right message to send if it was going to the right person and whether it was absolutely necessary.
And then of course, there’s texting.
How many texts have been went to the wrong person – as countless radio presenters love to broadcast?
But while you might be sniggering at the itchy trigger fingers of those less fortunate, just remember that statistically speaking, you could be the next victim.
A survey by the search engine Lycos has claimed that 42 email mistakes are made every minute in the UK.
The same survey reckons 60 per cent of us have sent an email to the wrong person and 33 per cent of these messages included steamy images or text.
It also claimed that nearly a quarter of wrongly addressed emails were mocking the very person they were accidentally sent to.I have to own up that I’m just as guilty ........
“Mmmmmmmmmm .... tofu” was intended to be sent as a gentle tease to one of my vegetarian colleagues....
Unfortunately, it was sent as a reply to the person who had sent a press release on this questionable, tasteless and squidgy foodstuff.
Fortunately, they actually thought I was serious about liking tofu and sent four boxes of samples...
That taught me a lesson.
mgreen@cngroup.co.uk
