Just posted an updated version of my “Nine Lives of Email” list, which I wrote in 2007.

The original impetus was this AP article in which I had been quoted about missing White House emails during George W. Bush’s administration. See Anick Jesdanun, “White House e-mail recovery not trivial“, AP, April 2007. In that context , a couple years later it turned out I correctly diagnosed that the emails would be found on back-up media. SeePete Yost, 22 million missing Bush White House e-mails found“, AP, December 2009.

The instigation to update this list was the current decade’s expansion of message storage locations, including into Slack, Salesforce and so many other 21st Century collaboration and communication platforms.

Even before sending a message or posting social media content, you should still assume you will be writing to the whole world. For the quickest “Netiquette” lesson in captivity, see the 2019 Mueller era version of the Green Eggs and Ham “Multiple Audiences” Test originally created by my colleague Mark Ostrau and tweaked by me over the years.

Let’s be careful out there !

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