Hi, With liability disputes it often comes down to what the average reasonable person might expect, whether the result was foreseeable and the damage preventable. (Take it from a total layman, who has no business advising you in any way.)
I would say, that most people who are familiar with the BCC feature and may have even researched how it works would have a reasonable assumption that it works "as documented". And, I would think that it was foreseeable to you that people who are using BCC are doing it so that the recipient does NOT know who else received the email. Furthermore it was preventable by NOT breaking with the standard. So - if your system breaks the "implied feature" of BCC, then I think it would be very good idea if you publish a big disclaimer, and in a prominent location that your email users can't miss (e.g., don't put it in the fine-print.) Best Regards Andy Schmidt Phone: +1 201 934-3414 x20 (Business) Fax: +1 201 934-9206 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Erik Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 10:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Declude.JunkMail] Legalities of adding header info Dan, we do the same thing. Our terms of service, privacy page and contracts state that we reveal BCC's in the headers. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Horne Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 4:17 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Declude.JunkMail] Legalities of adding header info I have a customer that is PO'ed at us. We put the recipients of emails into the headers of every email using Declude's %ALLRECIPS% variable. This is so we can identify the people who incorrectly report us as spammers to AOL just because we forward their mail for them. Since AOL strips that out, we use Declude to figure out who the message was sent to. So this customer gets a bounce message from an email he sent to his clients making extensive use of BCC:. In the headers of the bounced email, he saw his whole client list. Now he's PO'ed, threatening legal action, etc, claiming we are "intentionally forwarding identifying information a user thought was confidential". Any thoughts on the legal liabilities of bypassing the BCC: functionality in this way? My supes has tasked me with finding out about our responsibility in this matter (the email admin instead of the lawyer, natch). -Dan Horne --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com.
