The high cost of e-mail autocomplete
I've always been leery of Microsoft Outlook's autocomplete feature. That's the one that guesses who you want to send the e-mail to by looking at the first few letters you type.
It's right most of the time.
But with e-mail used to send everything from jokes, to family photos to corporate secrets, "most of the time" seems like far too low a bar.
Eli Lilly and its outside lawyers found out this the hard way this week when one of the esquires sent a note intended for a colleague to a New York Times writer with the same last name. (Note: I'm not certain which e-mail program the lawyer was using, and it's supposition, though a seemingly safe bet, that some sort of autocomplete was to blame.)
The result was that confidential negotiations with the government involving as much as $1 billion quickly became nonconfidential. The Times, doing what it does, got a big scoop.
A representative for Pepper Hamilton, the law firm whose barrister sent the note, was not immediately available for comment. But, in good news for the firm, an Eli Lilly representative told Portfolio that the firm is not immediately getting the boot.
Still, that's some pretty big consequences for a feature that saves a few seconds' time. Sure, those seconds add up over time. But I imagine the lawyer in question would give any amount of time to have that e-mail back.
I try to always give my address bar a second look before hitting send, but once or twice have found my note to a colleague going to an outside contact with a similar name. Maybe Microsoft should get rid of the feature.
Then again, in a world where businesses and governments are increasingly secretive, maybe the typo has become the greatest opportunity for openness and democracy. On second thought, leave it in there.
Update: A Microsoft representative said the feature can be turned off. Here's how:
• Under the Tools menu, click Options.
• On the Preferences tab, click E-mail Options, and then click Advanced E-mail Options.
• Select or clear the "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields" check box.
Another suggestion comes from ClearContext VP Brad Meador, who recommends people tweak Outlook settings to delay sending e-mail for a matter of minutes. That way there's a chance to catch a broad array of mistakes before they go out forever.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Incidentally, why not just (by default) force a user to select from a list? At least that way the user would ostensibly have to read the name and addy before selecting it.
I mean, if autocomplete (which is a PITA on both Outlook and IE) won't do the job right, then at least set up a better default behavior until such a day as they do get it right...
/P
Macs in the last IT gambit to 'standardize' to save money.
Not only that, but the idiot is too lazy to check the email addresses he is sending super confidential information to and its MICROSOFT's fault.
The only person dumber than the lawyer is the idiot that wrote this article.
uhhh yea ok.
Help text below:
AutoComplete is a feature which displays suggestions for names and e-mail addresses as you begin to type them. These suggestions are possible matches from a list of names and e-mail addresses that you have typed before, known as the AutoComplete name list.
On the Tools menu, click Options.
On the Preferences tab, click E-mail Options, and then click Advanced E-mail Options.
Select or clear the Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields check box.
Yep, users definitely have their own preferences. Both can be accomodated.
2. We've all been burned by auto-complete a few times and yet we all use it. What does that imply? That it's a super-useful feature we can't live without.
3. Autocomplete does a very good job of guessing who you're trying to send. The list is ordered by what's known as an 'MRU' algorithm (most recently used) -- it's an excellent performance compromise between keeping track of who you email how often, and being able to pop up a list really quickly.
Additionally, implementing the one minute outbound delay (through a rule) is a very good practice. I can't recall the number of times I forgot to add an attachment or to finish some paragraph, and noticed the error one second after hottong Send.
(with or without auto-completion), a better user-centered design
is to allow a un-sending an email. Alternatively you could have an
outbox that where mail is held until you do another gesture to
explicitly send it - some what like a reverse/upside-down
trashcan.
Un-sending an email with our current system (SMTP) is currently impossible, and i'm sure that won't change anytime soon.
However, the second option (in Outlook, at least) already exists. However by default send/receive is set to automatically send on hitting 'Send now', I believe you can change the function to never auto send/receive, but only send when you explicitly click 'Send/Receive'.
But you only blame Microsoft.
Might we be prejudiced? Hmm, just a little?
You even stated that you didn't know "who's software" they were using.
I say we bash you instead. (Just my opinion.)
Within the same domain, with a large number of users, without any autocomplete feature, it would be easy to typo to the wrong person. I know, this doesn't apply to the story.
Sending an email to the wrong person could happen in any email program. This was a user error, plain and simple. Blaming the application, especially when you don't even know that the application was used in the example you cite is ludicrous.
Let's see, a company doing a 1 billion dollar deal is not likely to be using Outlook Express, or Windows Live Mail so I am guessing it is Lotus Notes? Duh! Of course it was Outlook. I don't know why I read C|Net anymore.
To blame the software for hitting send after picking the wrong name is priceless. Why is this a C|Net article? Oh yeah because every now in then they need a Microsoft highlight to get all the haters to post a comment, great way to generate traffic to you site. Hats off to C|Net.
This is a case of user error. But it sure feels better blaming the application!
Microg
Suwannee) all have solicitors, not prosecutors.
You are sending your e-mail to the intelligence service way before you actually send it to the proper recieptant.
You using Gmail is the biggest invasion of your privacy on planet earth.
regards,
n3td3v
I guess I'll have to continue writing emails using Gmail that have no bearing whatsoever on world events...so they'll get tired of reading them and leave me alone.
Note for the author: Big Brother used to watch you, but your already paranoid enough...they don't have to anymore.
Please.
Where this becomes a problem:
1. If you misstype an address it is recorded anyway. Yes, it can be deleted BUT the NK2 list cannot be viewed/edited w/o a 3rd party tool.
2. Since the NK2 file resides on the user's local PC, it can be lost in the evnet of a system failure. Users LOVE that!
How do others deal w/ this, other than disabling autocomplete?
2. Backup the NK2 files when you do backups.
Please note that my standard consulting fee is $60 per hour, so you owe me 5 cents, because it took me 3 seconds to come up with the above solutions.
- asleep at the wheel...
- by gijo.mathew February 8, 2008 1:01 PM PST
- Technology exists that could have warned the user before the content was actually sent. If Eli Lilly or other large public companies were my clients (with all the confidentiality issues involved), instead of blaming Microsoft for what?s generally a time-saving feature, I?d make damn sure I had a good data loss prevention system in place on my network, e-mail servers, and/or desktops. The message could have been blocked, tagged, encrypted, or at least sent with a disclaimer. This time, it was sensitive content being sent externally? next time, it could be sent to an internal address, or posted to a forum (remember the Whole Foods CEO?), or even worse, a malicious lawyer (redundant, I know :)) copying sensitive information to a USB device! - gijo mathew http://www.orchestria.com/
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