Desicritics Comments on Abuse of Corporate E-Mail in India

Comment by EmilyCamron

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 17:24:11 EDT

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Comment by PM

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 01:22:50 EST

I think is is more because in most of the MNCs in India many of the email sites are blocked and so are most of the messengers so the only contact to the outside world is via their email addresses. This is not the case in companies in the US. So as some one as correctly pointed out people try these stupid things on facebook and other online portals which are not blocked.

Comment by Kim

Sat, 9 Feb 2008 08:43:01 EST

Anantha, Not to say that your problem is a small one. But you could have blocked that person "X" as a sender and never worried about receiving any more mail from him (or his email id).

Comment by anantha

Fri, 8 Feb 2008 21:23:49 EST

I have a friend who works for one of those back office operations of a mnc bank. And he has a friend, X, who I don't even know. So my friend forwards an email to all his friends (both X and I included). Now suddenly every couple of weeks, I would like half a dozen forwards in a day from this X. And all these forwards were addressed to a huge bunch of people. To me, it appeared that he had harvested email addys and put on his list. So at different points of time, when I was sufficiently worked up, I sent like 3 emails asking the guy to take me off his "forwards" list. Each time, the forwards stopped for a couple of months. Then they'd start again and continue till I got worked up enough to email him again. Then finally it blew up when I went to India on a visit. I was flying over the New Year holiday and was not able to check my email for about four days. And when I logged in, I saw about 35 email forwarded emails, with sappy images (which really got my goat!) from this guy amounting to a total of almost 20 Mb. So I email him a threat that I'd call his corporate number (which he had helpfully provided to one and all as a email signature at the bottom of his work email) and create a ruckus. Now I don't know if that was even possible, but it finally stopped! I havent gotten forwards from this idiot for a year now, but I still dread them! The reason I got worked up so much is that, he seemed to send all his emails as a group almost at the same time, seconds apart from each other. And the other day, my kid sister who works in one of those sweatshops, forwarded me a text email, a cut paste job from the bulletin board of their Chennai office - about 100 messages in the space of 30 mins of a bunch of people discussing the differences between different Tamil words that refer to different types of ghosts. So much for all the recruitment drives. It appears that these people literally dont have a job.

Comment by smallsquirrel

Fri, 8 Feb 2008 12:10:33 EST

I think it has to do with the age of the people involved, and the fact that it is a relatively new phenomenon. In the US, the "kids" who are working in MNCs have been exposed to the rules of corporate culture during internships while in college. They know better (most of them anyway, there are some famous slip ups!) than to use corporate email that way and are basically afraid of "big brother." On the other hand you have India... corporate culture is just catching on here, and for the most part I do find that the culture is a bit more relaxed in the Indian offices of the same companies. To show you how relaxed things are, some basic things such as copyrights and plagiarism are not really ingrained ideas for the kids who begin working at these firms. And they should be. I did some work for one office, and on their website they were using the images of ppl like Michael Jordan and other prominent sports figures. I instructed them to remove them immediately, and they had no idea what all the fuss was about! The one group who knows about this stuff well are the techies. Those developers will never be caught with their virtual pants down, cause they are the ones writing the code for most of the email and web monitoring systems used in the US. I think in a few years, this kind of thing will no longer be an issue. But for now I think all freshers coming into MNCs need a bit of a class in corporate culture.

Comment by Chandra

Fri, 8 Feb 2008 12:04:59 EST

Yes, that is because E-mail is outdated in the west. Most idiots spend time trying out all those stupid Apps on facebook....