Think Of Your Email as Eternal

While they aren’t usually as romantic, email messages, like diamonds, are forever. Of course you wouldn’t think so from the way they are hastily composed, cursorily read and quickly deleted. But the truth is that deleting an email is seldom enough to get rid of it. Chances are that there’s a local copy on the machine of the person who wrote it and another on the computer of anyone else who received it. It may be lurking in the “deleted items” folder of someone who doesn’t know the “deleted items” folder even exists or in that of one of those nuts who use “deleted items” as a filing system. There may be copies of every email you’ve ever sent on the backup tapes your company makes so that your mail system can be restored in case of disaster and copies on the servers of any email service used by you or your correspondents. And those are just the copies that are created automatically. There are people out there like me who keep examples of bad emails so they can write about them and others who will forward them to their friends so they can say “can you believe what an idiot so-and-so is?” and feel superior. These are also the kind of embarrassing emails that get forwarded ad infinitum, posted on blogs and turned into funny news stories. Remember that law firm associate who sent the angry email as he was leaving his firm ("I am no longer comfortable working for a group largely populated by gossips, backstabbers and Napoleonic personalities") and then tried to recall his message once he realized his mistake? He never had a chance of recovering all the copies of his message because it had already been forwarded beyond the reaches of his firm’s email system. You can still find copies online.

It’s not just your dignity that you have to protect. It seems like every week there’s a new story about a company or governmental agency getting in trouble for the way it keeps (or doesn’t) records in its email system. Morgan Stanley was ordered to pay more than $1.5 billion in response to a lawsuit (though this was overturned on appeal) because, despite the fact that it filed an affidavit saying it couldn’t produce subpoenaed documents related to a business deal gone bad, those very documents kept turning up on backup tapes that Morgan Stanley had asserted were lost but kept turning up. Some of them were found in a janitor’s closet. Both the Bush and Clinton administrations, which are required by law to maintain archives of all of their email, have found themselves facing investigations for not adequately keeping track of their correspondence. In order to deal with the challenges posed by keeping email records, many companies are struggling to come up with policies covering what messages they keep and how long they keep them. Many organizations are effectively deciding to keep everything despite the fact that it effectively means maintaining an enormous volume of data forever.

My firm has implemented a system where every message older than sixty days is moved from an Outlook user’s inbox and stored in an archiving system where it will presumably be available as long we have electricity to power our computers. And we’re not just talking about client emails. Since there’s no way to know what’s important and what isn’t, we’re saving everything; the emails from mom, the Viagra solicitations, the pictures taken at the alcohol-fueled holiday party. One of our secretaries expressed concern that some of her mail that would be archived might not be business related because she “occasionally” received personal messages at work. “If you don’t want it archived, delete it within 60 days,” I told her. “Otherwise it’s going to be around forever.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it probably would be anyway, and I wasn’t foolish enough to suggest that she not use her work account for personal email. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t think at least twice about what you put in your email at work. In addition to my general warning that you shouldn’t write anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see in email it’s also a good idea not to write anything you wouldn’t want to show up in court. Because your email belongs to your employer and they are responsible for what you write, everything you produce can be subpoenaed.

Besides the threat of the law, you should be very careful about putting down any strong opinions or emotions-- especially if you might ever change your mind. Remember those diaries and love letters you wrote as a teenager? Imagine them being reproduced and distributed to everyone in your high school yearbook. That’s the kind of potential for embarrassment you get with email. The fact that email-- just like your yearbook-- is more or less permanent is also a good reason to take the time to write well and try not to embarrass yourself as much as possible. You can’t go back and do anything about that Flock of Seagulls haircut in your senior picture, but you can make an effort so that your email is as smart and charming as you are.