more on localization and stuff
A friend of mine from when I was in school in Belgium, sent me a “merry christmas/happy new year” email. That’s cool, so I replied “thanks bro! you too” (or something to that effect).
Unfortunately however, he must have sent that email right before he left for the weekend/vacation, so I got this auto-reply:
I’m out of office until 2007, 8th of January
For ### project and/or #### ### helpdesk matters, please contact #### (+32 2 ### ####)
For all other subjects, contact IS - #### #### #### (+32 2 ### ####)Regards,
#### ######
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Legal Notice: This electronic mail and its attachments are intended solely for the person(s) to whom they are addressed and contain information which is confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure, except for the purpose for which they are intended. Dissemination, distribution, or reproduction by anyone other than the intended recipients is prohibited and may be illegal. If you are not an intended recipient, please immediately inform the sender and return the electronic mail and its attachments and destroy any copies which may be in your possession. ### screens electronic mails for viruses but does not warrant that this electronic mail is free of any viruses. ### accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this electronic mail.
———————————————————
Several things you should notice about this email:
3- The ###s are mine :-)
2- Ima be sued since I’m obviously breaching the agreement I didn’t know we had, by distributing their email.
1- The most important thing though, is that you can read what the message says. Yes, it’s in English. This is Belgium, where people speak French and Dutch (okay, okay, a few also speak German) but English is *not* the national language. And yet, it’s assumed that if you’re dealing with technology, you can read basic enough English.
Luke said,
December 22, 2006 @ 12:41 pm
These automated email replies are instant spam magnets. Some directors at my company like to use them, and they just get barraged with spam after the come back from vacation. One guy had a clean account - he would get 1-2 stray spam emails a month. He made me put one of those notification things up for a week he was out. Now he is getting 400+ spams a day.
The automatic email replies are no longer usable. They might have worked in the past, but nowadays they will just kill you.
Oh, and those disclaimer messages carry no legal weight whatsoever. The only reason people seem to use them is because they thing it makes the company look as if it cares about privacy, confidentiality and etc…
Seriously, if we would really care about client confidentiality, we should make them install PGP (or GPG) and just encrypt and digitally sign all the communication.
Every time I see one of these I automatically assume that the person either works for an idiot who forces all the employees to use these, or is just not the brightest crayon in the box… But that’s just me.
Olivier said,
January 8, 2007 @ 5:14 am
I’m unfortunately not the brightest crayon in the box… ;-)
BTW, no spam in my box after 16 days off.
Happy new year 2007 to all of us from Belgium
O.