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The E-Mail You Save Can Be Held Against You
By
Kim Komando
Reprinted with permission from Microsoft Small Business Center
When it
comes to e-mail, I'm a packrat. No, it is not true that I still have the
first e-mail I ever received. But I probably have my first e-mail from
the year 2000. In fact, I probably have all my e-mails from the year
2000. So of course, I have everything since then, too.
Why do
I have all this stuff? I'm not sure, frankly. Maybe I was concerned that
I would be sued over some imaginary transgression and would need an
e-trail to prove my innocence. Or maybe I was vaguely concerned about
some legal requirement to save this stuff.
I'm not
the only one doing this. Some of you have thousands of e-mails, too. And
you probably don't know why you're saving them, either. Maybe you're
worried about going to jail over some stupid e-mail you can't find.
I'm
hardly an expert in what e-mail documents and records to save. So I
talked to Donald Skupsky, the president of Information Requirements
Clearinghouse. He modestly describes himself as the world's leading
expert in this area. I also talked with Charles Fine, a Phoenix attorney.
Here are some things to consider when you
wonder whether or not to save e-mail, particularly in light of the
federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which imposes more requirements on
mostly public companies to preserve records.
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