Do These Email Privacy Statements Mean Anything?
If you’ve ever received an email from your bank, accountant, lawyer, or doctor (or any number of other professionals), you’ve likely seen the privacy disclaimer at the bottom of the message as well. He may have read something like this:
PRIVACY NOTICE: This email contains information that may be confidential and / or confidential. The information is intended only for the natural or legal person specified above, and access by unauthorized persons is unauthorized. Unless you are the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is strictly prohibited and may be illegal. If you receive this message by mistake, please contact the sender immediately and delete the message. Thank you.
It sounds intimidating, but could you run into legal problems if you “open, copy, distribute, or use the content” of an email containing one of these template notifications? Simple answer: probably not.
Generally, for a contract to be legally binding, both parties (in this case, the sender and the recipient) must agree to the terms. If you received a letter that was not intended for you, then you do not have an agreement with the sender.
“Failure to e-mail is usually the responsibility should be considered as part of the message, not as an agreement that both parties have entered deliberately,” – said Terry Gross, a lawyer from Illinois and founder of details Legal Attuned, LLC .
Gross points to several court orders that found that confidentiality notices and other disclaimers do not create a binding legal agreement between the sender and the recipient. In many cases, these notifications can actually serve a more informational purpose, helping recipients understand the sender’s role — for example, as a designated speaker .
“If anything, an email disclaimer could be indicative of intent,” says Erin Jackson, medical technology and telemedicine attorney at Jackson LLP Healthcare Lawyers . “That is, they tell the recipient what the sender thinks, hopes, and wants to achieve.”
For example, a privacy notice may be used to show that your therapist has made reasonable efforts to protect your personal information or that an attorney has made reasonable efforts to protect confidential communications.
Gross says email recipients will still often comply with these privacy requests, even if they are not legally enforceable. In general, all types of disclaimers may be dissuasive. If you have no compelling reason to violate the terms of the notice, you might consider following them.