email-risks-5

email fatigue, email bankruptcy, Flaming

Most business workers today spend from one to two hours of their
working day on email: reading, ordering, sorting, ‘re-contextualizing’
fragmented information, and writing e-mail.
The use of e-mail is increasing due to increasing levels of
globalization—labour division and outsourcing amongst other things.
E-mail can lead to some well-known problems:
email worms problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system

• Loss of Context: Information in context (as in a newspaper)
  is much easier and faster to understand than unedited and sometimes
  unrelated fragments of information. Communicating in context can only
  be achieved when both parties have a full understanding of the context
  and issue in question.
  
• Antisocial Behaviorisms: Email can be a "get out of jail"
  for those who are nervous or poor articulators in face to face
  situations. This can lead to society becoming less personal with a
  greater number of people being unable to hold conversations face to
  face.
  
• Flaming
  Flaming occurs when one person sends an angry and/or antagonistic
  message. Flaming is assumed to be more common today because of the ease
  and impersonality of e-mail communications: confrontations in person or
  via telephone require direct interaction, where social norms encourage
  civility, whereas typing a message to another person is an indirect
  interaction, so civility may be forgotten. Flaming is generally looked
  down upon by internet communities as it is considered rude and
  non-productive.
  
  
• Information overload: E-mail is a push technology—the sender controls who receives the information. Convenient availability of mailing lists and use of "copy all" can lead to people receiving unwanted or irrelevant information of no use to them.
  
  
• E-mail bankruptcy
  Also known as "email fatigue", e-mail bankruptcy is when a user
  ignores a large number of e-mail messages after falling behind in
  reading and answering them. The reason for falling behind is often due
  to information overload and a general sense there is so much
  information that it is not possible to read it all. As a solution,
  people occasionally send a boilerplate message explaining that the
  email inbox is being cleared out. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig is credited with coining this term, but he may only have popularized it.^[22]
  
  
• Inconsistency: E-mails can duplicate information. This can
  be a problem when a large team is working on documents and information
  while not in constant contact with the other members of their team.
• Spamming and computer viruses

he usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by four phenomena: e-mail bombardment, spamming, phishing, and e-mail worms.


E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers. Although the first e-mail worm affected UNIX computers,
the problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system

• Information not secret nor anonymous
  

1. e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before
   reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to
   intercept and read messages;
2. many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of your e-mail
   messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups
   of these can remain up to several months on their server, even if you
   delete them in your mailbox;
3. the Received: headers and other information in the e-mail can often identify the sender, preventing anonymous communication.

Despite these disadvantages, email has become the most widely used medium of communication within the business world.
Further reading

• E-mail encryption
• HTML e-mail
• Internet fax
• L-mail
• Push e-mail
  

• Anti-spam techniques (e-mail)
• Computer virus
• E-card
• E-mail art
• E-mail spam
• E-mail spoofing
• Email storm
• Information overload
• Internet humor
• Internet slang
• Netiquette
• Reply All
• Usenet quoting

On Fast Track
with
Dr. Ashok Koparday