I received another email today with a bold footer exclaiming the email’s confidentiality. I have to laugh every time I see one of these utterly moronic banners.

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Think about what this notice is claiming. Putting aside for the moment that the recipient has not signed a confidentiality agreement, you don’t even get to this notice until you’ve already read the previous material! How in the world can one be held responsible for reading the material, when the notice not to is at the bottom of the message? Furthermore, if you contact the sender, you have also reviewed the material, as the sender’s identification is not in the disclosure statement. In responding to the sender, you have proved that you broke the supposed agreement.

Such are merely minor points, however.  That you never signed a confidentiality agreement of any kind is enough to utterly render this notification legally null and void. You cannot insist that someone has entered a contract agreement simply by receiving email from you.

Imagine having a footer which stated, “NOTICE: This email is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential information. If you are not one of the intended recipients and you read this email, you owe Boneheads, Inc. $20,000,000 in contract fees and must pay this amount immediately.”

Any such ludicrous attempt at establishing a contract with a non-signing recipient would be laughed out of court and end up as a footnote on Failblog.org.

To be fair, sometimes it is not the end user, but the email server of the corporation in question which appends these notices. If you work for a company which appears to have its fair share of litigious idiots, you might email yourself to see if this is the case. If so, contact your IT department and demand to know why it is that they want you to look like a blithering idiot with every email you send.

Because that is all these confidentiality notices really say.