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PrintSpecial Report: You Had Mail
"I do e-mail pretty much anybody."
"I e-mail everybody."
"We e-mail our professors at school."
No matter who you e-mail and no matter what your message is, once you click send there's no turning back - - even if you've made a mistake!
Angie McConnel, Made an e-mail mistake
"I had sent the e-mail to the wrong person!"
Angie McConnel of Somerville knows all to well about e-mail mishaps. She thought she was writing to one of her co-workers about a mutual colleague
Angie McConnel, Made an e-mail mistake
"I had emailed so fast I had actually put my co-workers name I was talking about in the e-mail and sent it to her instead of the person who I had intended the e-mail to go to. I had thought for a second if I could somehow distract her maybe go over to her desk I could just delete the e-mail!"
E-mail mistakes are made all the time - in work and in at home.
But that’s minor stuff compared to a message mishap the Kerry presidential campaign had during his run for the White House, Sen. Kerry's spokeswoman accidentally sent an internal memo to the press - telling her staff not to let the senator comment on Al Gore endorsing Howard Dean
Adam Kotkin, Bigstring.com
"Nobody wants something that they say today to be used against them tomorrow."
Adam Kotkin is with Bigstring.com, an Internet based e-mail system that claims its users will never have to experience embarrassing e-mail mistakes again.
Adam Kotkin, Bigstring.com
"E-mail should be the property of the sender and were giving power back to the sender."
Here’s how it works: you log on to their web site then write and send your e-mail.
Make a mistake? Want to take back what you've written? No problem. The web site will let you change it or erase it, even if it’s already been read.
Adam Kotkin, Bigstring.com
"You have the options to if you want to change your message if you want to make it so it can’t be printed, can’t be forwarded, can’t be saved. You control your e-mail at all points in time."
Attorney Barry Chase thinks that could open up a flood gate of new privacy laws and lawsuits.
Barry Chase, Attorney
"If you can remove it from the account of the recipient then I think you're talking about a property issue possibly, certainly a privacy issue."
He says once you receive an e-mail, you have the right to assume it’s your property
Barry Chase, Attorney
"The reasonable expectation of the receiver is I got it, I can control it, I can do what I want with it."
But Adam Kotkin insists Bigstring e-mails never leave the recipient’s computers - - and that only the messages in them are deleted.
Adam Kotkin, Bigstring.com
"There would be a record left, there would be the "to" and the "from", but the inside of the message would be blank."
Blank - or with a friendly reminder that 'you had mail'.
The basic service is free - - although Bigstring does offer even more options for yearly fee.
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