Email disclaimer: Difference between revisions

{{a|glossary|}}A window into your correspondent’s soul. It can be long or short; sombre or witty; comprehensive or general; but it ''will'' be there: an extract of text, appended to every outbound communication, canvassing any [[one or more]] of the following subjects:

===What it ''is''===

The disclaimer will disingenuously catalogue the email’s [[confidentiality]] (though it ''won’t'' be: you don’t protect confidences by randomly emailing them to people); its [[copyright]] (and it ''might'' be, but the commercial value of an electronic message in a world awash with the buggers is nil, so good luck suing on it); its [[privilege]] (and unless in her headlong rush to obtain legal advice having been sued, the sender mistook you for her attorney, or was one herself and mistook you for her client, it won’t be); its potential inaccuracy (this is certainly possible, and a cute counterpoint to its ostensible value as [[intellectual property]]: “look, it is copyright, but probably bullshit”); it presents existential epidemiological danger to your computer systems if opened (in which case wghat were you doing sending it to someone else, and had its intended addressee safely received this cyber-trojan-laden hell-bomb, would that have been okay?); and all that said  it will impress upon the mistaken receiver a moral — but (Law of Contracts 101 check: ''not'' legal) duty to destroy it if it was, in fact, sent in error.

It may also wax lengthily about what it is ''not'': a subject, of course, on which any [[lawyer]] can joyfully extemporise for as long as there are cattle still out on manoeuvres. It is not professional advice (as if that won’t be dolefully apparent on its face), nor an [[offer]] or a [[solicitation]] of an offer, nor a recommendation to ''do'' anything or ''not'' do anything (this is quite the juicy [[double negative]]: “we are ''not'' telling you ''not'' to do anything”.) And what kind of person acts instinctively on as recommendation from an email anyway? (Don’t answer that: it is most of you.)

All of this served up in the certain knowledge no person having enough adult literacy to comprehend an [[email disclaimer]] would — or even ''could'' — be dim-witted or bored enough to read it, much less care about what it says. Which begs the question: what do we think we are achieving with an [[email disclaimer]]? Which part of [[Chicken-licken|the sky would fall upon our heads]] were it not there?