E-Mail Controls in Office 2003

TiggsPanther writes "The BBC's Technology News reports than the next version of MS Office will include E-Mail controls which should limit way that e-mail messages can be forwarded. Being tied into the Information Rights Management concept, it might be interesting to see how quickly this gets taken up."

Comments

Re:Only looking out for themselves with this

[Tim C]

But I assume that employees will still be able to print emails

Why do you assume that? Why do you assume that the print function will be enabled for protected emails or other documents?

Now, I grant you that no technological scheme can completely prevent information from being leaked - it can't stop me taking it down with paper and pen, or photographing the screen, etc, but it can at least make it difficult to do. Also, while the photogrpah would be harder to refute, my hand-written scrawl copy of an email could easily be dismissed as a forgery...

I can see this being very useful for companies and even some individuals, but essentially, there is no technological way of protecting data from redistribution by its intended recipient. It's not going to be as easy as just hitting print, though.

Re:Dialog Box

[Saxerman]

At first I thought this was a patch to prevent future email worms, but this is just more DRM management. Besides sounding like the Emperor's New Clothes, for this to work wouldn't your mail client have to query the recipient to make sure they're going to pay attention to whatever rules you apply to your forwarded mail? And, of course, query it in such a way that you can't get a spoofed reply forged to look like a legit MS approved mail client?

This sounds like that phone plan where you only get the discounted rates if you get all your friends to sign up with the same plan. Except in this case the rates aren't any cheaper.

Typical slimy behaviour

[swordgeek]

Look, can we put the DoJ onto this NOW, rather than after MS releases it? Clearly sending proprietary format email violates the MS anti-trust settlement, and if we get someone working on it now, we won't have to deal with this piece of shite.

There is nothing here--NOTHING--that can't be done with existing protocols. PGP anyone (or GPG if you prefer)? I seem to recall that it had a 'read-don't-save' flag that you could set.

Furthermore, this won't help anyways. Hasn't anyone heard of screencaptures?

This new "feature" has no purpose other than to lock people into MS Office even further. It's a political trojan horse.

Re:The real agenda?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a few reasons why I would not permit this system in my business:

Hate mail: If a (criminal) employee sends another employee hate mail or simply inapropriate mail that (s)he can't print, forward or save the company will be sued (eventually) for creating a hostile work environment.

Legality: Self destructing communication is almost certainly illegal where it concerns the company's finances, policies, environmental records etc.

Security1: A false sense of security will encourage people to write e-mail that they would NEVER put in open communications.

Security2: Employees will be able to mail items such as source code, to trusted recipients while making it hard to detect the content of the messages or prove it later.

Security3: Rights management implies encryption or it is readily circumvented. Do you want your company's essential and confidential documents encrypted and managed by Microsoft software? What happens if the system administrator gets a bug up his/her but and encrypts the whole lot with a truly random key and quits? Trust the backdoor? Did anybody out there lose data on a Win2000 or XP encrypted folder because you forgot the key or re-installed the SW? What if the SW is faulty and corrupts the document database?

Security4: What about a virus or worm that exploits some 'feature' of the system and it kills your mail system or the patch makes it incompatible with earlier versions that inadvertently expires your entire document database?

Security5: If the message arrives encrypted I can not scan it for malicious attachements. The intended recipient opens it and executes the attachment. Back to square one with incoming viruses. I would like to bounce all encrypted incoming mail with a polite meassage asking that the mail be re-sent in a standard format.

Except for the encryption issue, all the points raised here have solutions but it makes my life more difficult. Also, the existing e-mail system is not broken so why fix it. Secure mail through PGP is possible, easy and dare I say it? Really secure.

There was a time when a company could not safely fire its DP manager or senior programmers. I see that state of affairs coming back to haunt us all.