Survey reveals email abuse by IT staff and lawyers

IT staff are the worst email abusers among all professions, with 69 percent of the sample admitting that they would open "suspicious" emails and 42 percent willingly circulating them to colleagues and friends. Lawyers are little better. These are the findings of an NOP survey commissioned by SurfControl. Approximately 61 percent of employees in the legal profession are unable to resist opening suspected inappropriate emails sent to their work email address, according to the results from SurfControl, a content security solutions company. A further 23 percent of them circulate the offensive material to colleagues and friends, risking disciplinary action and damage to their firm's reputation. The survey found that 80 percent of those interviewed in the legal profession realise that personal comments or material sent from their work email address is the equivalent of writing and posting the message on department letterhead paper. Nearly 30 percent of the sample indicated junior members of legal staff as being the worst email abusers in their office. The survey examined the attitudes towards email use of 100 professionals from each of the UK's seven largest employment sectors: accountancy, manufacturing, the civil service, financial services, legal, retail and IT. OUT-LAW.COM is the e-commerce and new media arm of Masons, an international legal practice with a long-standing interest in new media, IT and the Internet.

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