I gave this post two names because the true circumstances behind the following incident are not publicly known and both are good things to remember. I will start with the example (it is a true story) and then follow-up with the explanation. I did edit the email from its original content and my edits are shown in parenthesis. I did this to increase the ambiguity of the emails. Being more ambiguous will make them easier for you to apply to your situation or imagine receiving. It will also help protect the identity of the sender and establishment.

The following email was recently passed through the email system at my place of employment, I forwarded it to myself for use in this post:

—–Original Message—–
From: (edited out)
Sent: (not that important is it?)
To: All Users
Subject: Howdy

Nice to hear from you, I lost your e-mail address awhile back when they swapped out my computer! I was on vacation when it happened so I could not save my shit. Not much has changed except (this place) is getting to be a sucky place to work and my boss is an asshole. I’ve been diagnosed with (a medical condition) last month so my stay (here) could come to an end soon! I haven’t told (my employer) yet but I’m close to spilling the beans. If I do end up being done here, I’ll take a year off and travel around the U.S. for awhile so don’t be surprised if I call you some day and say that I’m in (your area). Gotta go.

Exactly 21 minutes after that email was sent, a follow-up was passed around:

—–Original Message—–
From: (the same email account)
Sent: (21 minutes later)
To: All Users
Subject: Mistake

If you received a message from me that was not of a good nature please disregard as it was a practical joke and I’m working with IT to solve this issue!

You may notice that I cited the sender of the second email as “the same email account” rather than “the same person” in my posting of these messages. The reason for that is because one of the theories is that the person whose email account these originated from was not the one who sent the original message.

One of the two main ideas that is circulating about the origin of the original message is that the person whose email account the message originated from was not at their computer at the time the email was sent. The thought is that this individual walked away from their desk and someone else took the opportunity to send the message.

Herein lies the first of the two lessons. If you are going to walk away from your workstation, don’t leave it open for anyone to use. If you do not wish to log out of the station, at least lock the screen so that someone else cannot sit down and use it. How long do you think it would actually take for someone to sit down and type the 127 words (before my editing) in the original email? If you can type 65 words per minute, you could type that message in less than 2 minutes and the entire time between sitting down and typing it and having it sent could be less than 2 ½ minutes.

If you do not know how to lock your screen, ask around and have someone show you. It is easy to see the ramifications that this first email could have on a person and their job. To make matters worse, all users in this case means all users in the system of the place, including the Blackberries of the executives. Do you really want other people to be able to send emails from your email account, it will look like you sent them.

The second lesson comes from the other major idea about the origin of the original message. The thought this time is that it was that particular individual who sent the message, but that it was not intended to be sent to all of the users at the place. If this were the case, this makes for a very good example of why you should always, double, triple, and quadruple check your messages. You can’t just proofread the message, but also make sure of what is in the To: line of that email. Once you click that “send” button, it is too late!

Whatever the true story is, there are two very good lessons to be learned from what happened. Be security conscious and double check everything.