Fun_People Archive
21 Oct
MEEMOTD - Most Embarrassing E-Moment Of The Day
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 95 01:33:56 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: MEEMOTD - Most Embarrassing E-Moment Of The Day
Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: David C Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net>
Forwarded-by: Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.net>
Forwarded-by: risks-request@csl.sri.com
From: "self@usa1.com" <self@usa1.com>
An article by Brian McGrory entitled "E-mail as evidence" in *The Boston
Globe*, 19 Oct 1995, p.1, (the article discusses this and also the issues
about companies' right to read employee E-mail) had the following anecdote,
which seems made for RISKS:
... A high-level executive with a Manhattan health company had a new
technology that allows users to tape themselves with a tiny camera built
into their monitor, send it through the system, and have it appear on
the recipient's screen as a talking, moving image [sounds like a
Connectix camera on a Macintosh to me].
One night, arriving at her hotel, she flipped open her portable
computer and began recording such a message. Sitting before her laptop
in the privacy of her room, she teasingly disrobed, performed what a
corporate lawyer later would describe as a "shimmy," and purred to the
intended recipient, a fellow married colleague, "Hurry to the hotel and
here's what you get tonight."
Problem is, she struck the wrong button on her computer, and the
video flashed on the screens of more than 400 employees throughout her
health company -- subordinates, bosses and people who had never met her
before."
The article goes on to describe how bootlegged copies of the message were
distributed around the company, and appeared on floppy disks sold at
computer fairs.
And I thought Oliver North had set the record for embarrassing E-mail
screw-ups.
© 1995 Peter Langston