| I would never send an e-mail about confidential medical information. Knowing how insecure e-mail is, that would be reckless. Read my other comment in this thread to learn about how insecure e-mail is. The fact that people think it's private or secure is a major problem. But your outrage is not misplaced -- knowingly mishandling mail is not simply excused because e-mail is already insecure. > ... it's sloppy and too many people take the easy way out instead of being professional. My defense of the "many inboxes forwarding to one" scenario was not meant to cover every perceivable scenario. Obviously I would not advocate it in all situations and many situations would not be appropriate for that. If someone does not set it up right, I am not trying to defend that sloppiness. An example of a good fit: someone who works part time at several companies, or the sole proprietor of a few businesses. If mail goes to CEO@ABC, replies are from CEO@ABC; mail to CEO@XYZ is returned by CEO@XYZ. If all of them are on Google Apps for Domains anyway, it is not a big deal, it's not less secure, and the owner of the e-mail address has less authentication and security overhead. Note that if you are mixing providers, like google apps and self-hosted mail, it gets much more complicated. In that case you are altering the physical security of that data. Examples of bad fits: customer service, sales messages, bug tracking, official company broadcasts, and many others. Regarding underwater's comment: obviously if the e-mail does not belong to you, you should not forward it somewhere other than the owner's server without the owner's permission. Re-reading my comment, I should've mentioned that a shared mailbox is only appropriate in some cases. |