It's marketing. They are trolling for the masochists among us.

um, yeah, unless this is part of a govenment contract. for those, I can garuntee that they have legal weight... and criminal weight. Frell, we have to take compliance courses every year on this very thing.

If the email contains some types of informationthat are covered by disclosure agreements, and those agreements get breached? I think the article writer has just never seen that kind of legal action.

On the other hand, if you're writing about aunt edna's gout? yeah, it wouldn't cover that.

Those statements always make me want to forward the e-mail to 26 people. And the no-print things make me want to pull out a ream of paper and have at it. People emailing me shouldn't tell me how to run my life vis a vis some statement from their company. I print out what I need to and don't print what I don't.

I do wonder how that would hold up in court: That simply by receiving an email, that you are somehow under an agreement. And realize that in order to get to the disclosure statement, you have to scroll through the entire email (and have probably read the whole thing by that time). So, the theory is that just opening a message puts you under some type of contractual obligation to protect someone else's information? Hmpf.

Email disclaimers serve an important purpose: Busywork for lawyers to try justify their position on the payroll, instead of doing something productive with their life.

Just add to every outgoing message:

Notice: The preceeding email is copyrighted and all rights are reserved by the sender. Unless you are named "Phineas Aloysius Ptolemy Fudruckerr", you are only permitted to read the odd numbered words in the above email. If you have violated this agreement you owe the sender $10 US for each even numbered word you read. By reading this disclaimer, you agree that any claims arising under it will be settled in binding abritration by the Amy Alkon Settlement Agency.

"If the email contains some types of informationthat are covered by disclosure agreements, and those agreements get breached? I think the article writer has just never seen that kind of legal action."

SwissArmyD, I think you're a bit confused here ... think about it, if I intend to send you confidential information, generally I will make you sign a formal non-disclosure BEFOREHAND. If you deliberately send someone confidential information BEFORE you have signed a non-disclosure, than all bets are off. You simply cannot send someone confidential information and add as a footnote claiming that merely receiving it constitutes a formally binding non-disclosure agreement, and presume that it will be binding. An agreement requires knowledgeable provable consent. I've signed many non-disclosures for customers and suppliers etc., not once have I ever had anyone send me the confidential information BEFORE an agreement is in place, ever, nobody reasonably expects that you can do that. If the information in the email is really that confidential, don't send it in the first place until an agreement is in place, it's as simple as that. If merely receiving an email constituted a legally binding agreement then you would be able to, as pointed out, place conditions such as that you now owe money to the sender.

If the situation is, as you even give away in your wording, that "the email contains some types of informationthat are covered by disclosure agreements", then it is the *non-disclosure agreements in place* that would be making that a breech - NOT the silly little auto-addendum on the email. If the non-disclosure is in place, the email disclaimer doesn't add any additional protection, if it isn't, it's non-binding.

This is make-work work for society's leeches.