Not too long ago I received (as I often do) a press release describing a new product from a chip vendor. I read through the press release, and at the end, I saw this:
Confidentiality Notice.
This message may contain information that is confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, disclosure, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message, or any attachments, is strictly prohibited.
Umm, hello? A confidentiality notice on a PRESS RELEASE? This has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen, a prime example of lawyering out of control.
I’m sure that attaching this type of notice to every email sent by every employee of a corporation seemed like a good idea to the lawyer who first thought of it. It probably seemed like a sensible precaution after someone accidentally emailed the company’s top-secret plans for world domination to everyone in his address book. But really, has such a notice ever actually stopped someone from misappropriating confidential information? (Challenge to lawyers: I’ll donate $100 to the charity of your choice if you’re the first to provide a verifiable example of such a notice actually preventing the misuse of confidential information.)
On a related note, my firm was recently hired to recommend a processor for use in an upcoming product. As part of this project, I was looking for information about the software available for one of the candidate processors. Turns out all such information from this particular chip vendor is available only to authorized users of the vendor’s password-protected website. OK, they’re a little paranoid about competitors—I’m cool with that, so I sign up and get a password. Then it turns out that the particular files I want to access each require an additional, unique password that has to be emailed to me. I could understand this extra step if these files were particularly valuable. But they weren’t—in truth, they weren’t very informative at all. To make matters worse, they came with a 3,000-word license agreement, and I had to “click here” to indicate acceptance of its terms. And I had to do so over and over and over again for each of the 16 files I wanted to download. By the end of the day I was ready to cross this particular vendor off the list based solely on the annoyance quotient of its website.
Whether blanket notices attached to emails or a seven-step secret handshake required to download a file, the layers of “protection” get piled on, one after another, like so many layers of sediment at the bottom of a pond. Do they actually prevent misappropriation of sensitive information? I’m skeptical. Do they reduce productivity? Absolutely. Given today’s tough economic conditions, perhaps it’s time to rethink this trade-off.
***This column is confidential. You may not read or redistribute without signing an NDA.
Jennifer Eyre White of BDTI contributed to this column.
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