immediately notify the sender and destroy the message"
Every once in a while I get a (legitimate) email that contains this statement.
Am I under any legal obligation to do so?
Peace,
mangeorge
This is in an email, I assume? And it was sent to you by mistake?
This happens to me all the time at work (although my company hasn’t started puting such nasty messages at the bottom. yet.) I generally respond to the person saying “wrong person” - I figure the sender screwed up, and the message needs to get to the right place. Plus, if I don’t tell the sender, I’ll probably keep getting more emails.
As for the “destroy” part, it seems to me that that’s just legalistic cover-your-ass type stuff. I don’t see how you could possibly be under any legal obligation - that would imply that by opening an email (that you didn’t even ask for) you somehow agreed to a contract. I certainly wouldn’t try to take you to court under that pretext.
Maybe a legal Doper could clear it up?
I just delete them. Why reply saying “wrong person” to a spammer who now knows that they sent the spam to a working email account? Cannot be good.
I work at a law firm and our emails and faxes all have such a line at the bottom. While IANAL, my best guess is that you aren’t allowed to do much with somebody else’s stuff that you received by accident - for example if Visa accidentally sends my new card to the wrong address, that person can’t go around charging stuff on it.
A notice like “This info is meant only for Joe Smith. If you’re not Joe and you received this in error, please notify us and destroy the letter” means that if you turn around and do something nefarious with said info you’re much more likely to be in deep doodoo when you get caught - you can’t say “Gee your honor, I didn’t know that it wasn’t meant for me.”