On the list of offenses that can be committed via email, many of us are guilty of petty crimes. Whether sending a hasty email to the “wrong Bob”, accidentally replying to the entire department when you meant to send a heads-up to a co-worker, attaching the wrong document to a message, or perhaps mistakenly forwarding a message that contains past messages you’d rather the recipient hadn’t seen, most of the time an email gaffe ends up a non-issue or blows over pretty quietly. After all, to err is human.
Sometimes, though, it doesn’t blow over. When a steamy or scandalous email is leaked or sent to the wrong person, it can become viral, spreading at an exponential rate across the internet, and wreaking havoc with reputations. This is especially true when a large organization or famous politician is at the heart of the story. A media circus ensues, careers might end, and some people (we hope) learn the valuable lesson that email is not a secure medium of communication.