February 6, 2008
Yet Another Reason Attorneys Should Encrypt Email
Last Friday I wrote about the dangers of sending sensitive emails to clients unencrypted. Please read the comments Tom Mighell wrote - he made some very good points.
Today I read that sensitive settlement negotiations were discovered after a lawyer mistakenly emailed sensitive documents to a New York Times reporter rather than co-counsel.
What would have happened had the lawyer sent this email encrypted? It wouldn't have sent at all, since the encryption software wouldn't have recognized the recipient as having an encrypted key and would have thrown a warning to the sender. The sender would then know to place the correct recipient in the email.
Of course, there is a concern that you could send an encrypted email to the wrong party who is also set up to decrypt emails from you. This is a good reason to not set up encryption with everyone but rather just with those you expect to share privileged sensitive information.
The way around sending email to the wrong person, assuming you use Microsoft Outlook, is to turn off the feature "suggest names while completing to, cc, and bcc fields" in the advanced options of email options (under tools>>options).
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Filed under Policies/ Procedures, Technology by Brian J. Ritchey
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