>>>Note the image attached relates to the last part. I will also apologise in advance for any inappropriate URLs or whatehaveyou I may ever (have) post(ed). A<>E<>R<<<
From http://www.smh.com.au/icon/0111/10/news1.html }}}>Begin �Home > Icon > News Saturday, November 10, 2001 Death by a thousand emails It seems there's no shortage of people willing to commit electronic harikiri by sending personal information via email, writes Nicole Manktelow. Just one click and it's away - a r�sum� to the recruiter, a memo to your boss and a steamy note to your new sweetheart. But what if you mixed the addresses up? It's arguably the most popular online application, but for the careless, email is also one of the most risky. The very qualities we love - its speed, ease and potential for countless copies to be spread about the Internet - are the features we fear will trip us up. Did that email go to a trusted friend, or has the latest news from your personal life just been sent to the industry mailing list? Was that a valid virus warning, or have you been caught broadcasting last month's hoax? For all the users who have ever held their breath and worried about the worst, you are not alone. Randy Cassingham has seen the best (depending on your point of view) of email bloopers. He is the Colorado-based author of This Is True, a popular online newsletter that pays tribute to real life blunders, including the antics of misguided criminals, bumbling politicians and all manner of Internet faux pas. At the top of his blooper list, Cassingham remembers an instance in 1996 where, at an appearance to promote Internet use in American schools, then US president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore had this exchange in front of reporters: "What's our email address, Al?" Clinton asked. "It's www dot whitehouse, one word, don't capitalise it, dot, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Gore replied, completely botching the actual addresses - [EMAIL PROTECTED]" and "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". Says Cassingham: "Politicians have repeatedly shown their ignorance of how the Internet works. In 1998, one of our congressmen, Republican James Traficant, of Ohio, was quite worried about it. He urged Congress to protect kids from sexual content online, and said he had proof of its dangers: a letter from a constituent who said she got pregnant over the Net." The Australian political scene has not been without its own email- related blunders. The vandalising of the Australian Liberal Party's Web site the first day of the 1998 federal election campaign was sparked by an email. When a Labor Party staffer discovered the site of the arch rival could at the time be easily manipulated, he sent a note to a mailing list - with the somewhat predictable result that the site was defaced. Email can leave a long, long trail and running the world's most influential software company doesn't provide amnesty, as Bill Gates discovered. During the long-running US Department of Justice anti- trust action against Microsoft, prosecutors compared Gates's testimony with copies of confidential email messages, dating back to 1995, that Gates had sent to his executives. The episode proves that no matter who you are, things you say on email can come back to haunt you - and they can be admitted as evidence in court. Of course, email embarrassments don't always require a courtroom - just a moment of lapsed judgment and the click of a button. "I've seen lots of stories about people who accidentally sent private email to a large group of people," Cassingham says. "One woman in Arizona sent a businesslike note to her boss, but he didn't see the significantly more personal PS at the bottom: 'Sometimes I will fantasise about ... our encounter the other evening. I'm getting aroused writing this' - and he forwarded her memo to his own boss. "You can be sure it was noticed then! The lovers both got into trouble, especially since it made the newspapers and their spouses found out about it." Cassingham started This Is True in 1994 and, as proof that bloopers and blunders make good reading, it now reaches several hundred thousand subscribers in 192 countries each week - via email, of course. "Human interest stories have always been fun for readers. We love seeing what silly things others have done - if for no other reason than to be able to say, 'I wouldn't be that dumb!' Truth has always been stranger than fiction, and the attraction is pretty much universal." Even True readers get in on the act, says Cassingham. "Now and then I'll get a very personal and suggestive note from a lady, and it's very clear she meant it to go to her husband. I really enjoy replying to them and asking if they meant to send it to me - their responses are often priceless." Beginners' guides and help Web sites are full of good advice when it comes to online etiquette and many include warnings that email is not a wise choice for intimate discussion. Possibly the most widely used example illustrating this point is the real-life case of a British lawyer, Bradley Chait, who took an email from his girlfriend in which she had made comments on their sexual habits and forwarded this message to his mates, reportedly with the comment: "Now, that's a nice compliment from a lass, isn't it?" Chait could have also told his mates down the pub, but because of the nature of email, the message sparked a chain reaction and achieved cult status - forwarded from person to person until it was broadcast around the world to more than a million people. His online bragging was a powerful lesson for Chait's now ex- girlfriend - and every other email user. If you must kiss and tell, don't do it via email. "You could argue that it's not an email issue but more to do with the character of the person she sent the message to ... but email is fast, fast, fast, and maybe people write things and send them too quickly," says Turramurra-based clinical psychologist Jeroen Descartes. People may trust email too much, reveal too much or be too frank in their messages, because it feels like an intimate communication. However, Descartes believes email and chat may also win our trust for other reasons. "It's similar to meeting up with a stranger on a plane or a long trip and you talk more freely about things simply because you will never see them again," Descartes says. "In chat rooms Internet users talk with people they don't know so they feel free divulging issues they would not want to talk about with their friends. "Also, if you communicate digitally you lose intonation, body language and facial expression. Words are only 10 per cent of communication. This may be why people can be more prone to mistakes [when using email]." Possibly the most common mistake any email user can make is to send a message to the wrong recipient, or hit Reply All instead of replying to an individual correspondent. On several occasions executives and spokespeople have accidentally emailed to journalists comments intended for their public relations agencies. "I don't think she really understood our main point," wrote one IT exec to his PR manager after an interview. "Better send her some more material," he said, accidentally sending his comments to the writer involved (the author of this article). Misdirection is a common mistake, but made worse if the content of an email is sensitive. A French worker lost his job after sending an email attachment with naked photos to the wrong person - a female boss in the US who just happened to have a name similar to his intended recipient. The modern workplace is littered with examples of jokes, tasteless images and pornography that, once discovered on corporate email systems, have put workers in hot water. Staff from Toyota and Holden were sacked last year after pornography was discovered on a company email, as were Centrelink staff in Adelaide. Several Telstra workers were suspended for similar offences. A joke memo that claimed an employee had been murdered may have seemed funny at the time, but workers at Herbert Smith in Britain stopped laughing when they were disciplined for harming the company's reputation. The spoof announcement became another Internet classic, to be forwarded and re-forwarded. In September last year, telecommunications company Orange sacked 40 staff in its British offices for sending emails with pictures of severed body parts. The year before, The New York Times sacked 23 staff for sending "offensive" messages. The definition of offensive? The NYT wouldn't say, but it could have been a rude cartoon, like the one that got 70 staff from the British offices of insurance company Royal & Sun Alliance suspended. An altered image of Bart Simpson in a sexual pose was among material detected. There may be valid legal reasons why an employer should monitor email communications of employees, Internet Industry Association (IIA) chief executive Peter Coroneos says. "These include possible misuse of sensitive proprietary information, liability under laws ranging from discrimination to sexual harassment, defamation and so on," he says. "In many cases the employer may be vicariously liable for the acts of employees and would reasonably have policies in place to deal with them." For their own sake, Coroneos recommends that employees assume all their workplace email is opened. "Assume when you send an email that you are sending a postcard rather than a sealed letter," he says. "It will not necessarily be your employers who read it, but anyone in the chain between the sender and recipient with sufficient network access privileges. Insulting the boss in an email is probably not a career-enhancing move." Rumour busters "The Internet must be shut down for 24 hours in order to allow us to clean it," reads a memo regarding Internet Clean Up Day. Like old jokes and office gossip, some stories keep coming back, no matter how many times they're debunked by sites such as HoaxBusters (http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org), Vmyths (www.vmyths.com) and the Urban Legends Archive (www.urbanlegends.com). Perhaps the upcoming five- cent tax on all email will make us think twice before clicking Forward. Gotcha! False alarm Bad taste test: a doctored picture emailed round the world post- September 11 that blurs the lines between fiction and reality. >>>This be where the image 'spose to be<<< News broadcaster CNN is hoping email distribution will work in its favour to debunk a claim its TV network used old video during coverage of the September 11 terrorist crisis in the US. "CNN asks that you copy and email this statement to whomever asks about it," begins the message. "There is absolutely no truth to the information that is now distributed on the Internet that CNN used 10- year-old video when showing the celebrating of some Palestinians in East Jerusalem after the terror attacks in the US. The video was shot that day by a Reuters camera crew. "Again, please read this - and copy it - and send it to anyone you know who may have the false information. Thank you." However, given the Internet's appetite for the bizarre, chances are that more email users would have received a doctored picture of an oncoming plane pasted into the background of a shot from the World Trade Centre. The tourist featured also appears in other ridiculous scenes that can be found at Sillygirl.com. Sillygirl.com http://www.sillygirl.com This Is True http://www.thisistrue.com �Privacy�|�Copyright � 2001�All rights reserved �Archive�|�Feedback End<{{{ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway
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