Great Email Disasters

Meet the sheepish stars of the World Wide Web whose stories will make your toes curl. There is the story of the man who emailed a woman he met at a party, telling her, "This is the part where I throw caution to the wind . . . Your smile is the freshest of my special memories," and then sat back in horror as his email was circulated round the world; or the government spin doctor who emailed colleagues on September 11, 2001 advising them that it was "a good day to bury bad news" after the World Trade Center had been attacked, but before the Twin Towers themselves collapsed; the ex-employee who thought he'd gotten revenge by wrecking his former company's computer system with a bombardment of emails, but was discovered and ended up in court; the Pentagon officer who accidentally included a schoolgirl on an email list that discussed top-secret matters; and the marketing man who wrote an email mocking his employer and sent the message straight to his boss.