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I received an e-mail today with at the bottom the following disclaimer:

Email Disclaimer:

This email and any attachments are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited. This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright. No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner.

If you have received this email in error please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete the message from your system. Although this email has been checked for viruses and other defects, no responsibility can be accepted for any loss or damage arising from its receipt or use.

Oops, looks like I just disclosed part of it…

I’ve seen this kind of nonsense in e-mails before and generally ignore it, but on this occasion, it really stood out, being twice the font size of the message itself and all. I won’t go into the nature of the e-mail (which has more to do with decency than feeling threatened) but it wasn’t even of the kind that would warrant any disclaimer.

To make my point: I will not take seriously any e-mail containing such bullshit. I also feel in no way obliged to hold myself to those conditions. I never asked to receive the e-mail, nor was I given a chance to refuse agreement. Had I been given the choice, I would never have agreed. To explain why, let’s go over it sentence by sentence.

This email and any attachments are confidential.

Nothing wrong with that, but e-mail isn’t exactly known to be secure. Moreover, the recipient is usually informed of the confidential nature of the information before the information is actually received, not afterwards.

If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited.

An e-mail client must copy “the material” from the server in order for the disclaimer to be read in the first place, whether it’s the intended recipient’s e-mail client or not. And by merely reading the disclaimer, one is already using “the material”.

This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright.

Of course they are. I, too, have copyright on everything I produce. Happens automatically.

No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Did sending the message constitute a written permission? Because my server transmitted it to my client, which then transmitted it to my screen, which transmitted it to my eyes, which transmitted it to my brain for processing. I’m sure it was adapted somewhere in all those reproductions.

If you have received this email in error please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete the message from your system.

To notify the sender, one would have to use “the material” to extract the sender’s address. Exactly that was prohibited a few sentences ago, remember? And I don’t delete e-mail that’s not spam, it gets archived for possible later reference. Disclaimer or not.

Although this email has been checked for viruses and other defects, no responsibility can be accepted for any loss or damage arising from its receipt or use.

Sure. Whatever you do, never take responsibility, for anything. Way to go!

Now, I happen to be the intended recipient in this case, but still. It most certainly is not the recipient’s responsibility to make sure he/she is in fact the intended recipient. That’s entirely up to the sender, even more so if the message is confidential as claimed.

Last but not least, a tip: When requesting a favour, it helps not to include such draconian bullshit. Kinda takes away any and all incentive to help.