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Five email tics I'd love for you to lose

Merlin Mann | Nov 7 2005

For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these? Format courtesy of my other site.

  1. The liberal use of the "VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!" flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the "Unsubscribe" I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you've ever sent
  5. The including of my -- plus 98 other strangers' -- personal email addresses in the "To:" line of your friendly reminder about Tyler's birthday party

Friend: I love you, but you must evolve.

95 Comments
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TOPICS: Classics, Email, Personal Productivity, Work
Merlin's picture

Oh, now we attorneys need...

Submitted by Merlin on November 7, 2005 - 2:15pm.

Oh, now we attorneys need the privileged and confidential disclaimer for legal reasons. Don’t take that away from us Merlin

Fair enough, but what legal reasons? Can you walk me through the actual laws that kick in when that disclaimer is added versus the laws that already apply in its absence?

I mean, I get mail with those stupid disclaimers all the time from people I don’t know from Adam. UN-requested email and with no conscious agreement on my part to do squat. So at what point have I agreed to do anything that makes that disclaimer actionable in court (again: as opposed to if it just weren’t there at all)?

(Forgive me: this stuff totally fascinates me)

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