Consider E-mail as Permanent

What you probably don’t know about e-mail is that it’s permanent—it really can’t be deleted in the traditional sense. Several copies of your e-mail are usually stored or archived within the system and may be found if needed or looked for.

Consider your business e-mail as being sent to a company bulletin board. And your message or documents can be stored for years on back-up disks and tapes.

To prevent yourself from doing anything that can hurt you or your organization, consider these helpful hints:

• E-mail should always be considered public, not private. Don’t ever write anything you wouldn’t want everyone in your office to see.
• When replying to someone’s message, check the list of recipients before you respond. Oftentimes, e-mail is automatically copied to a pre-programmed distribution list. Your messages can be forwarded without your knowledge.
• If a message you’ve received is personal or even informal, let the sender know you’ll be forwarding his or her message before you pass it along to someone else.

SOURCE: American Media Inc., West Des Moines, Iowa

Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 38.