How many email messages were waiting for you when you logged on today? I'll hazard a guess and suggest that it would have been somewhat more than one!

A report from Jupiter organisation estimates that commercial e-mail spending will grow from $164 million in 1999 to $7.3 billion in 2005 - this represents an estimated forty-fold increase in e-mail volume.

It's also estimated that average number of commercial e-mail messages that US online consumers receive per year will increase from 40 in 1999 to over 1,600 in 2005; non-marketing and personal correspondence will more than double from approximately 1,750 in 1999 to almost 4,000 in 2005.

So it's no exaggeration to say that one of fastest growing methods of communication is email. In fact, we're in middle of a communications revolution and it's ironic that we're once again relying on one of earliest forms of mass communication - written word.

Language is a dynamic, living thing and in past, has been able to keep pace with changes; so, when electricity was invented (or discovered - depending on your view of world), it was given a name which comes from elektron Greek word for "amber" and electrum, Latin word for "amber" - alloy of gold and silver. In mid 1600s it was known that rubbing amber or glass would produce a magnetic effect that attracted light weight materials, threads, dust etc and this was only known use for electricity for many years - until that fellow with kite came along!

The first big break-through in rapid mass communication, telegraph, takes its name from two Greek words: tele meaning "far off" and graphein "to write, draw or represent by lines".

Television is a mix of Greek tele and Latin visus, past participle of verb "to see".

Computers were given a name which is derived from Latin computatio - a reckoning, because in early days, that's all they did.

1. Your e-mail is not private.

2. Your e-mail might not be sent to intended recipient.

3. Your e-mail can continue to exist even after you delete it.

The following article explains truth of these alarming statements and why you should be concerned if you're sending confidential messages by e-mail.

1. The privacy problem ---------------------- When you send an e-mail message from computer A to computer B it passes through one or more machines (C, D, E, etc.) on its journey. At each step along way, an unscrupulous individual with access to intermediate machine has opportunity to read -- or even alter -- your e-mail message.

Within a private intranet (i.e. a company network), such privacy violations could occur if:

* IT staff with access to mail server were unscrupulous;

* unauthorised personnel had access to mail server (e.g. if someone walked away from server without logging out); or

* security measures designed to keep hackers out of mail server were insufficient or were not enforced rigorously.

When e-mail is sent over Internet (a public network) risks become notably higher. If you send an e-mail message from Sydney to New York it may pass through half-a-dozen machines on its journey, *each* of which are subject to risks mentioned above. Thus hazards accumulate with each extra machine that message passes through.

2. The identity problem ----------------------- Another risk with e-mail is that you really don't know who will receive it. This happens because some people choose to forward (i.e. divert) their e-mail to another person or authorise another person to read it for them. For example, if you send a message to a senior colleague, remember that this person's e-mail might be read by his or her secretary or stand-in. That can be awkward.