I correspond with friends quite a bit by email. To me, emails are sacrosanct, and I would never forward an email to somebody else without permission. Am I alone in this? I know some people do forward emails on to other people, sometimes sensitive emails. What's the general consensus?

I stand with you on this Skylark, I would never forward anyone's email without their strict permission and I hope that those I correspond to feel the same.

ET

I am still extremely careful what I say in an email, especially at work. Look at the whole Clare Swire debacle if you want to see how quickly things can get out of control. (I won't post any links on here as it's quite crude in content).

I believe my emails are private and would therefore never forward them to anyone unless they were intended for that purpose.

it depends on the context. at work i forward emails all the time without permission; it's quite common that i'll need to discuss a mail from a vendor/end user/whatever with someone else before replying. we also sometimes forward mail to one of our internal mailing lists, often because the person who received the mail originally thinks someone else would be able to handle it better.

generally, when you email someone in an official capacity, it's accepted that you're really communicating with the company, so the mail might be redistributed internally.

as for personal emails - well, if you're trying to arrange to meet someone, for example, would you really object to someone forwarding a mail saying "Let's meet at 2PM" to someone else? i would decide whether it's appropriate based on the content of the mail, rather than simply deciding that no mail can ever be forwarded.

BTW: it's worth remembering that normal email is not secure, and can easily be intercepted between you and the destination; either accidentally (e.g. by a sysadmin trying to diagnose some kind of problem) or maliciously. it's likely that such people have better things to do than read email from people like us, but it's something to be aware of.

I think that emails should be kept private, unless intended for wider distribution.

Forwarding sensitive or personal emails seems rather a despicable act to me.

I have to confess to forwarding to a friend a fairly preposterous email from someone I knew only in a virtual capacity. There are some truly strange people out there on the web...

I would never forward an email without the permission of the person who sent it to me. The only exception would be with chain emails, and I never pass those on either: No dire consequences to date!

I get very cross with the lecturers in my department, however, who feel free to add names and forward emails (often containing personal matters) at will. I now have a signature on the bottom specifically requesting people don't and it still happens. This really annoys me, but seems too minor to bring up with the SU. Sadly its a typical example of the departments lack of respect for its students.

The other one that annoys me is people who don't use the BCC feature. Its there for a reason, and people have no right to pass on my email address to all and sundry!

I agree Tamsin. I got an email just this morning from someone who obviously got a whole load of email addresses from the organisers of a conference I was at recently. I now have the email addresses of all delegates starting with R.

Very shabby.

Maybe its my anarchic streak, but that's the moment when I want to make use of the 'reply to all' feature and send a polite message to everyone pointing out that I now have their addresses. And that I could quite easily sign them all up to recieve spam and virus laden emails.

I'm sure if we all did it more often, organisations would be forced by the howls of protest to get their act together...

I'm with you on that tamsin!

Like others have said whether I forward an e-mail or not is utterly dependent on context.

Work e-mails have to be forwarded frequently - then again I see them as company property not my own.

Personal ones are another matter. If it is a joke etc then yes I might forward (if I thought it funny enough) but I would remove the details of the original sender.

Ones relating to a band I'm on the committee for I again would forward if needed.

I do agree with Tamsin though about the forwarding of e-mail addresses. My work one I accept can be found on the web so if you know my name and who I work for then the address is there to find. I keep 1 address for dealing with the above mentioned band, another for use where I expect spam the final one I treat like my personal phone numbers is there for me to let those I want to contact me that way know it and I get annoyed if it gets shared without my permission.