Being an e-mail moron

[Supernick]

I sent an e-mail last night to a friend at work who was a bit miserable, and in it said "lay off the weed and drink for a while" (a stupid in joke rather than advice). It seems like this never got through and her work might have intercepted it. Is it likely that it could have been intercepted and what suggestions could there be for making it better. She's terrified and I feel absolutely awful.

[Fish Kid]

I always follow the 'deny everything' route.

If indeed her workplace have intercepted it, this email came from someone else (and does not reflect her views, usual disclaimer stuff blah blah blah) , she could just claim you were a stalker trying to get her into trouble at work.

Tell her if she does recieve it, delete and do not reply, if she does reply. this (and depending on what is said) could get her into trouble.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, I've not been hauled up for stuff sent/received which is nothing short of a miracle.

[jimmer]

if that's all it said then i doubt its been intercepted. lay off the weed could mean anything and i very much doubt an automated mail intercept would have blocked that. Even if for some strange reason it has been blocked it is still highly unlikely anyone will actually read it. The worst thing either of you could do is try and explain or remedy the situation because this will just bring it to the attention of your friend's employers. best to forget about it in a least said soonest forgotten kind of way.

jim

[jno]

yes, it's wise not to include anything controversial in emails sent to office addresses. Keep it for Hotmail - George Bush will still be able to read it, but he's too busy to do anything about it. But even the average office usually has better things to do than monitor employee emails for signs of individual evildoing. More likely to be some sort of electronic glitch.

[Supernick]

Luckily nothing seems to have happened yet. Fingers crossed.

[jake-the-peg]

It is pretty simple to intercept mail based on keywords in content such as "cannabis". However in my experience most companies prefer to copy and forward mail because it makes it much less likely that you'll block important mail by accident.

I would think that it's more likely that the mail was wrongly identified as spam and deleted.

A good piece of general advise is never put anything in an e-mail that you would not be happy putting on the back of a postcard.

[BigB]

If it came down to it you could say by "Weed" you meant Tobacco as this is refered to as the "dreaded weed" by somepeople.