Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:15:00 PDT Michael Costanza http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110805/12274015408/if-you-can-read-this-youre-breaking-law.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110805/12274015408/if-you-can-read-this-youre-breaking-law.shtml NOTE: This e-mail message (including attachments) is subject to attorney-client privilege and contains confidential information intended only for the person(s) to whom this email message is addressed. This e-mail may be covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §2510-2521, which provides criminal penalties for your use of this email without permission. This message may contain Protected Health Information covered under HIPAA Rules and HITECH Standards including, but not limited to, all applicable requirements of the HIPAA Security rule in 45 C.F.R. §§ 164.308, 164.310,164.312 and 164.316, including any amendments thereto. If you have received this e-mail message in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone or e-mail and destroy the original message without making a copy. Now, although I have to admit that I was initially impressed by all those fancy numbers and § symbols, a few things struck me as odd. First of all, if the information is "intended only for the person(s) to whom this email message is addressed," and it was addressed to me, wouldn't that mean it's intended for me? Second, with absolutely no information in the body of the email, other than this warning, how am I supposed to know for sure that it was not intended for me? And, finally, if you mistakenly send someone else's confidential information directly to me (not because of an email server routing error), how is it that I am the one in danger of "criminal penalties" for opening my own mail?

As I have no interest in reading this person's confidential information, I have not opened the attachments and have no plans to do so. And although I'm not even certain a threat like this is enforceable, I will be canceling my email account, destroying my hard drive, and leaving the country for a while. Wish me luck.

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]]> your-mail-is-not-your-own http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110805/12274015408 Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:07:00 PDT Dennis Yang http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090930/0032286363.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090930/0032286363.shtml running a twitter promotion where you have to guess the winner of each of the games this Saturday. Tweet the correct winners to @NHL and you could win yourself a trip for two to a regular season game of your choosing. The promotion is fine and all, but what I was surprised at was the ridiculous background image that is on the NHL twitter page: an image of the entire legal "Official Rules" in both English and French.



Seriously? Whose idea was it to fill the entire background with legalese? It is barely even legible. A simple link would have sufficed, but it almost seems like a childish response to a lawyer's request to put these rules up on their twitter page. Then again, in reading through the extensive rules, I was reminded of my favorite part of any sweepstakes in which Canadians take part, the math question.

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]]> read-the-fine-print http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090930/0032286363