Everything You Say Online Stays Online… Forever
As Peter Parker/Spiderman’s Uncle Ben once said “with great power, comes great responsibility”. In this digital age, we all have a “great power”, the power of our voices. Anyone in the world can have his opinion heard and it is as simple as commenting on a blog post or video online. What many people don’t realize though is that once you use your voice, you can’t really take back what you said. Every webpage, post and comment is indexed in Google and other search engines and will probably be around forever in one form or another.
E-mail Can Be Just As Public As The Rest Of The Web
E-mail as well can be a tool to project your voice. Even if you just send an e-mail to one individual, it doesn’t mean that he won’t forward it to the rest of the world. Once you press “send” you can never take it back.
News Spreads At the Speed of Light
Yesterday I received an email from an organization that was sent to their entire mailing list about an event which I thought was pretty important. Immediately after receiving the e-mail, I posted it to Facebook, tagged all the local people I could find and then asked people to spread the word. Within less than an hour, three other major organizations sent out the exact message word for word to their entire mailing lists. A few minutes after that, I got a call from the original sender who told me that the event was not supposed to be on such a large scale and they wanted to keep it a little quieter. My response was that first of all, if that was the case, they should have specified and second “once you press ‘send’ you can never take it back”.
Mail Goggles
A while ago, Google Labs (which I’m a big fan of), introduced Mail Goggles as an optional add-on for Gmail. When enabled, Mail Goggles requires you to answer several math equations before being able to send emails at nighttime. This was created because too many people send emails out at night that they regret the next morning and can never take back.
Emails Gone Bad
Don’t think that just because you are friends or partners with someone that you can send them anything and it will be kept quiet. There are so many cases of blackmail and lawsuits based on these types of e-mails from friendships that fell apart. Every other week there is a case of teenagers sexting each other and causing major problems.
We all have a great power to use our voice but we also have the responsibility to think before we click “send” or “post”.