|
 |
Indeed, most email is like having a conversation in a crowded restaurant. If you whisper, you may get away with no one listening; however, talk in a dinner decibel level about something interesting and some of your neighbors are discretely listening. Indeed, sending an email message is not like placing a sealed envelope in the mailbox.
There are usually two reactions to this revelation. The first is shock as some think back to messages that they have sent and to what those messages contained from a content or privacy perspective. The second is an almost dismissing lack of concern stemming from a feeling that "my life, including my email, is an open book to anyone that cares."
Challenges of email. In reality, based on other forms of communication, we have come to expect certain things from written mediums and therefore need to understand the ongoing challenges of this relatively new form of communication. There are many, but here are just a few.
Readability. Most email is straight text -- very readable by anyone coming into contact with the message. It is not difficult to read an average message. Date and time stamping. How do you establish definitively when a message was written, sent and received? What time zone is the mail server? How "idiot-proof" is the sending mechanism? Many of us have had the experience, as either the sender or receiver, of receiving a message that was expected hours and days before the "system" sent it. The obstacles may be systematic, procedural in getting the send function to work, or even unexplainable.
Circuituitous route of email. Messages are usually sent using the "Internet." This means that messages are typically routed through many servers and make stops along the way. While a paper system with many stops is still relatively private as a result of the envelope, email is available on all the servers along the way.
Control over message forwarding. Further complicating the lack of control over email is the ease of forwarding and distributing the mail, even accidentally, to inappropriate or unintended recipients. Email's capacity to be instantly transmitted gives new meaning to "words heard around the world."
Life of the message. Similarly, the words of email can be immortalized by anyone along the way. Since every stop and recipient typically has decision-making authority about saving the message, the underlying question is "who controls it?" This can be (and has already been in some high profile cases) a significant issue in the event of the discovery process for a lawsuit.
Printing of mail. Email, while ideally a convenience, increases the urgency of self-preservation (CYA). I have increasingly seen people become neurotic of printing out (using much paper) and saving email that will demonstrate that they are doing their jobs, did not do anything wrong, are complying with regulations, and much more. Printing, categorizing, and filing the paper email are defeating the purpose!
What to do about it? In responding to these issues, vendors are innovative in addressing at least a few of these problems. The solutions are appearing under the names of Disappearing.com, Tumbleweed.com, Ziplip.com, Zixit.com, HushMail.com, CertifiedMail.com, and InvisiMail.com. Even the US Postal Service is planning to introduce a service called NetPost.Certified in the fall. The technologies and strategies used tend to address some but not all the challenges at the same time.
Solutions include:
Outsourcing. As a way of better controlling the email environment, some of these vendors are offering services where the email content is residing on their servers, even when recipients read them.
Encryption. Many solutions include a component of encryption either using PKI (public key infrastructure) or something more proprietary. Alternatively, PGP Personal Privacy by Network Associates is the frequently used software that can interface with common email clients. This solution controls who can read a message.
Disappearing. Mission Impossible assignments would always end with a notification that "This message will self destruct …" The goal of the control of an expiration date to a message is sometimes critical. Instant. Solutions even exist for the newest form of email communication -- Instant Messaging. One product, Personal Encrypter by VirusMD, will actually help with its privacy issues.
No solution is foolproof. Many of us will continue to grapple with how to address our email challenges in a way that integrates with our desktop email clients (Outlook and others). In addition, how we will use tools to make the contents of email more private while still not bypassing the email reviews many companies have adopted. (According to the American Management Association, 47 percent of companies review email.)
While email is clearly the most used application of the Internet, it is definitely still in the infancy of its usability in a corporate environment.
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
