Many of us feel like we can't function without email. It's become the easiest way to organise our work and our social lives – without playing phone tag.
But there are disadvantages to everything and email is no exception - a hasty click of the 'send' button can lead to a multitude of disasters.
This was the case for Sharon Dyson, who sent a rather sexually explicit reply to an email from her boyfriend. She criticised her employer's clients, discussed her masturbation techniques, then accidentally clicked 'reply to all' and sent the email to 30 of her boyfriend's friends. Rather than delete it, the recipients naturally forwarded it on and pretty soon thousands of strangers were discussing her antics.
Rachael Fountain is another example of the dangers of email. After deciding to hold a 'porno party', she designed a saucy invite and emailed it out to all of her friends from her office computer. Unfortunately one of her friends had the same name as the company director. No prizes for guessing what happened next? Needless to say the director wasn't impressed and Fountain lost her job.
An explicit email was also the source of humiliation for an unnamed City banker when photos - which were stolen from her memory card - of her performing a sex act on her boyfriend were emailed to her boss and colleagues and posted on to a website. The poor woman was 'extremely distressed' and hasn't been back to work since.
Senior associate Richard Phillips was another email casualty. He became a laughing stock when he emailed Jenny Amner demanding £4 to cover the cost of dry cleaning after she accidentally spilled ketchup on him at a work function.
Amner saw red and sent this reply, copying in everyone at the firm: 'I must apologise for not getting back to you straight away but due to my mother's sudden illness, death and funeral I have had more pressing issues than your £4... Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary.'
The hilarious exchange was then forwarded on and soon it was whizzing its way into inboxes all over the country. Phillips was ridiculed for being 'tight' and resigned from his £100,000 a year job shortly afterwards.
So how can you avoid ending up as another email scandal? The most common mistakes (as outlined in the previous horror stories), are to reply to the wrong person or click 'reply to all' accidentally. The best way to prevent this is to double check all of your emails to make sure the content is correct and be sure that you've addressed it to the right person before you hit 'send'. This might sound obvious, but it's very easy to get caught out. If you're in a rush, save the email and come back to it when you're not so busy. Although this may be time-consuming, an extra 10 minutes could avoid a lot of future embarrassment.
Remember that emails don't disappear once you've sent them. There are copies on your computer's hard drive and server as well as the recipient's. Most companies screen emails for inappropriate content, so try not to use bad language and avoid discussing personal matters in too much detail.
And finally, bear in mind that once you've sent an email to someone you have no way of knowing what they will do with it. So if the idea of someone else seeing your email horrifies you, think twice before you send it.
*Source by Corporate Services Group PLC
