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15 May 2008 13:11:20
Mind Your Metadata: Don't Reveal Strategic Information Through Hidden Comments, Tracked Changes, and Document Properties
Rick Segal, apparently an ex-Microsoft employee and current venture capitalist, writes of a business plan he received which contains revealing metadata that the authors obviously didn’t intend for anyone else to see. Potentially strategic information has been leaked via metadata in a number of high profile incidents relevant to the legal world, including during a lawsuit by SCO against DaimlerChrysler. Some lawyers routinely check documents they receive from opposing counsel for metadata. Metadata can hide in several forms in Microsoft Word documents, including comments if you have not deleted all comments from the document, tracked changes if you have not accepted or rejected all changes in the document, and document properties (see File->Properties in the menu, under the “Summary” tab there is information such as title, author, and company, that you may want to change or delete). Converting to PDF is not a foolproof way of preventing metadata from reaching prying eyes as document properties metadata and other metadata such as comments may be preserved. (Acrobat 8 features an “Examine Document” tool which can help bring to your attention metadata in a document). Programs exist to “scrub” your documents of metadata, including Workshare Protect and Payne Consulting’s Metadata Assistant. Other resources: ABA Journal: YourABA: LTRC Presentation: LTRC Site-tation post: LTRC publications: 06 May 2008 09:53:18
Just Released: Volumes 1 and 2 of the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report
The first two volumes of the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, the new-for-2008 Baseline and Budgets (Vol. 1) and Law Office Technology (Vol. 2), are now available. In 2008 the findings of the ABA Legal Technology Survey Report will be published serially in six volumes, including Baseline and Budgets (May), Law Office Technology (May), Litigation and Courtroom Technology (June), Web and Communication Technology (June), Online Research (July) and Mobile Lawyers (July). Highlights from the first two volumes include:
We’re following the lead of the legal profession by going paperless - the 2008 survey reports will be published solely as PDF e-products and available for immediate download. Each of the six volumes begins with a trend report that summarizes the notable results and highlights changes from previous years, followed by detailed charts and tables. The survey is an annual project of the For more information, including a sample of the chart and table structure of the survey volumes or the survey methodology, or to order the survey, visit the LTRC Survey Page. 25 April 2008 10:02:27
Caution Travelers: Laptops May Be Subject to Suspicionless Searches at the Border
Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in United States v. Arnold that the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonable suspicion” requirement does not apply to the search of a laptop during an international border crossing. The court rejected Arnold’s argument that a laptop should be treated similarly to a home or office for privacy purposes, holding instead that a laptop was akin to a traveler’s luggage. George Washington University Law School Professor Orin Kerr discusses the holding in more detail at the Volokh Conspiracy blog. Arnold presents an interesting challenge for attorneys who travel internationally: how do you safeguard the sensitive client and firm data on your laptop when a security person, sans any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, can investigate your files? The easiest and best solution is simply to avoid placing sensitive or confidential information on your laptop. Such information can be stored on secure servers at an attorney’s main office and accessed remotely via VPN, or encrypted and stored remotely with an online backup vendor. If internet access will be unavailable on your trip or you otherwise require local copies of your sensitive information, consider encrypting the data and perhaps also relocating it to a storage device such as a USB thumb drive or CD-R. While such methods won’t guarantee you privacy, they may reduce the likelihood that your client’s confidential information will be revealed in a casual search of your laptop. 23 April 2008 10:04:24
Roll Out the Red Carpet: 2008 Webby Awards
It may not have quite the media cachet of the Oscars or Emmys, but the annual Webby Awards are no less prestigious for those who create or follow Internet-based technology. Now in their 12th year, the Webby Awards recognize excellence in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobility. The awards are judged by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body that includes a range of leading Web experts, business figures, and celebrities from David Bowie to Anil Dash to Matt Groening. In addition, a People’s Voice Award is also determined for each category based on a public vote via the web. Nominees are broken down into nearly 70 categories with websites representing the majority of nominees. Some of this year’s nominees include Eyes on Darfur (Activism Category), HowStuffWorks (Best Copy/Writing), Apple (Best Use of Video or Moving Image), Yahoo! Sports (Sports Category), and the ABA Journal website (Law Category). The Webby Awards’ website offers a full list of nominees (as well as nominees and winners from the past 11 years). As a research and reference tool, the list of former winners and nominees offers a great directory of high quality websites by category. If you’d like to vote for your favorite Webby Award nominee, you can visit the public voting page now. 22 April 2008 16:49:23
Outsourcing for Solos and Small firms: Virtual Paralegals
“Virtual Assistants (or simply VAs) are independent contractors that provide support to attorneys and other professionals. VAs work from home or a remote office, and can help mitigate your administrative burden in the same way that an in-office assistant would. They can be particularly helpful for solo and small practices where the ebb and flow of administrative work makes employment of a full time staff person impractical.” Many functions lend themselves to being performed virtually, including that of a paralegal. A virtual paralegal still works under the direction of an attorney; the main difference being that a virtual paralegal works from a remote location, on a contract basis rather than as an employee. A virtual paralegal enables solos and small firms to take advantage of the economy that effective use of a paralegal can provide to a practice, on an as needed basis. Featured are two attorneys that discuss the benefits of utilizing virtual paralegals. Family lawyer, blogger and solo practitioner Grant Griffiths uses a virtual paralegal with 20 years of experience. Roger P. Glovsky, a corporate attorney that bills himself as The Virtual Lawyer, discusses his use of virtual paralegals in a two part series on leveraging your time. Consider expanding your options and your capacity with a virtual paralegal. Following are resources we’ve gathered to help you take the plunge. Resources - Attorneys and Virtual Paralegals
Virtual Service Providers 22 April 2008 08:52:31
Hearings on Delivery of Legal Services through Technology
The ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services is holding hearings on the use of technology to provide personal, civil legal services over the Internet and the policies that govern that use. Specifically, the Committee will examine: - The range of providers who are using technology to provide legal services through the Internet and the scope of those services. - The benefits and detriments that have resulted from the use of technology to provide legal services over the Internet. - Emerging trends and possible future directions of technology providing legal services via the Internet; and The hearings will be held as follows: - May 9, 2008, Noon to 3:00 PM, in conjunction with the Equal Justice Conference, Hilton Minneapolis, 1001 Marquette Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55403; - Friday, August 8, 2008, hotel TBD, in conjunction with the ABA Annual Meeting in New York. Those interested in appearing and/or submitting materials should contact Janice Jones at 312/988-5787, janicejones@staff.abanet.org. Further details and on-going hearing archives are posted at http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/delivery/techhearings.html 21 April 2008 12:19:59
Time Saver: One Stop Shipping
When it absolutely has to be there and you also want a good price, these websites will allow you to compare the delivery options and prices of several competing carriers. Simply input your ship from and ship to locations and you’ll be provided with a selection of shipping options by carrier, earliest delivery possible, and price. Note: ABA members have discounts (up to 26%) with UPS through our member advantage program. at: http://www.abanet.org/advantage/ups/
17 April 2008 14:31:42
New Mailbox Threat: Spear-Phishing
Phishing is not a new term in the e-security field. It refers to an attempt - typically by email - to trick or mislead a recipient into giving up valuable personal information. Phishing attempts often come in the form of an official-looking email from a bank, credit card company, or online service like eBay, which asks you to enter your username and password for a “routine verification” or something to that effect. If the recipient falls for the trick and enters his or her information, it is transmitted to the phisher and opens the door for a multitude of abuses. These phishing attempts are usually mass-mailed in hopes that, out of the thousands of recipients, a small handful will fall for the ruse. As phishing attempts grow more sophisticated, it is becoming difficult to distinguish between legitimate and dangerous emails. One of the latest tricks has been dubbed “spear phishing,” and it refers to phishing attempts that are carefully crafted and targeted at particular individuals or groups rather than mass-mailed to a general audience. David Bilinsky, the Practice Management Advisor and staff lawyer for the Law Society of British Columbia, recently blogged about one such spear-phishing attack involving the legal community. In that case, phishers sent emails to executives that purported to be US federal court subpoenas. When the executives clicked a link within the “subpoena,” their computers were infected with malware that gathered personal information including passwords and credit card numbers. What can you do? Commercial anti-virus and anti-spam software may help reduce your risk to some extent, but the number one safeguard is caution. Be wary of emails from senders you don’t know. Review emails carefully for suspicious misspellings or obvious errors, and avoid clicking links or downloading files if you aren’t confident that they’re safe. 15 April 2008 08:21:45
YouTube -Your Free Technology Consultant?
Most people are familiar with YouTube only as an entertainment tool – a place to watch everything from a skateboarding dog to fifty-year-old videos of your favorite jazz legend. But for lawyers contemplating a technology purchase, it may serve an entirely different function: a remarkable source for detailed, hands-on reviews, demonstrations, and tutorials. For example, an attorney considering the purchase of a Tablet PC can do a simple search on YouTube for “tablet pc review” and turn up lengthy reviews for products including the Fujitsu Stylistic ST5112, the HP TC4400, or the Motion Computing LE1700. An attorney considering a new Smartphone could watch hands on reviews of the iPhone, the BlackBerry Pearl, or the HTC Kaiser. Indeed, a simple search for most any mainstream product will turn up a review – and often more than one. Beyond product reviews, YouTube can also serve as a helpful educational tool. Lawyers can use videos such as this overview of a technologically advanced courtroom or this Cardozo Cyberlaw Society e-discovery lecture to help them grasp technology concepts that may seem overly complicated or inaccessible in print. Know of an especially useful YouTube video we should highlight? Let us know! 14 April 2008 08:12:27
Latest in Web Domain Dangers: Unassigned Sub-Domains
Web domains are an area of technology fraught with abuse and advantage taking, as we’ve reported before. One of the newest issues relates to sub-domains -- the portion of the web address that comes before your domain name (i.e. in http://example.madeupdomain.com, the “example” portion is a sub-domain). Businesses of all types use these sub-domains to separate independent portions of their web site. In the legal world a firm might use sub-domains within their web site for different practice groups or for different office locations. Typically, if a domain owner hasn’t set up a sub-domain, it isn’t accessible; a user trying to access a non-existent sub-domain will simply receive an error message. According to TechCrunch, however, popular domain registrar and web host NetworkSolutions is filling their customer’s unused sub-domains (that is, any sub-domain the customer hasn’t explicitly set up) with pages full of advertising links. NetworkSolutions' customers experiencing this issue may be surprised to learn that they agreed to allow NetworkSolutions to do just that via their service agreement. Schedule A, Section 11 provides: You acknowledge and agree that any or all domain names that are (i) registered with Network Solutions, (ii) hosted on a Network Solutions domain name server, and (iii) do not otherwise resolve to an active Web site, may resolve to an "under construction" or similar temporary Web page ("Under Construction Page"), and that Network Solutions may place on any such Under Construction Page promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions' Web site, Network Solutions product and service offerings, third-party Web sites, third-party product and service offerings, and/or Internet search engines. Thankfully, NetworkSolutions allows its customers to “opt-out” of these advertisements via a check box in their account settings. With the variety of advertising restrictions placed upon attorneys by their respective codes of professional responsibility, it is probably advisable for them to do so. Likewise, attorneys using hosts other than NetworkSolutions should check to see if their host has a similar policy – and a similar opt-out function. 11 April 2008 11:56:07
Journler: Casemap Replacement for Mac Users?
The ability to dual-boot Macs in either Mac OS X or Windows as well as the robust virtualization options available, including Parallels and VMWare Fusion, have lead a number of attorneys to switch their practices over to the Mac platform. While the option of using the same old Windows software exists, many are finding that they’d rather turn to Mac-native applications that can do the same job – and sometimes do it better. In that vein, the blog MacLitigator has published a detailed report (with screenshots!) of a piece of software called Journler that provides much of the same functionality as the well-known Windows software Casemap. MacLitigator explores the benefits and the limitations of Journler, the former including its non-proprietary data files and modest ($34.95) cost and the latter including the absence of transcript management or Bates stamping. And if you’re interested in Macs in the law office, check out some of our other recent Site-tation posts: Mac Users: Do You Need Antivirus Software? 25 March 2008 10:03:02
USB Flash Drives: Productivity Tool and Security Gap
USB flash drives, sometimes also referred to as jump drives or thumb drives, are unquestionably useful tools in the information age. They provide an inexpensive means of backing up and sharing large files, and can even be configured to hold a mobile software suite that will allow you to get your work done on any compatible computer – a boon for any lawyer who travels regularly. The readily available drives may, however, present a significant security threat for any firm or business whose employees regularly handle sensitive information. It isn’t difficult to imagine an attorney loading a flash drive with client files and then accidentally dropping the drive – and the client’s confidential information – on the train, nor would it be difficult at all for an unscrupulous employee or contractor to plug a flash drive into a firm computer and copy over vital, confidential data without detection. How do you balance the usefulness of such flash drives with their potential security risk? ComputerWorld reports one solution: Washington State’s Division of Child Support banned its employees from using their own personal flash drives, and instead issued employees state-owned SanDisk Cruzer drives with built in encryption and password protection. This move not only protects sensitive information contained on the drives in the event they’re misplaced or stolen, but also helps prevent unauthorized flash drives being used to break the department’s security. For more on flash drives, read our FYI: Computing on the Go: Thumb Drives. 19 March 2008 14:52:38
Mac Users: Do You Need Antivirus Software?
At ABA TECHSHOW 2008, one of the hot topics in the new Mac track was just that question: do Mac users really need antivirus software? Opinions seemed to be split between those who felt it wasn’t a bad idea (just in case) and those who felt the lack of Mac viruses and the overall security of the Mac OS made it unnecessary. If the issue still has you scratching your head, you may want to read an aptly titled new piece by Mac security expert Rich Mogull: Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software? Mogull leads readers through a number of helpful tips for determining whether antivirus software – or some other methods – will help or hinder their Mac experience. (Note: Internet Explorer users may need to scroll down quite a bit to get to the article.) See also: ABA Site-tation: Downside to popularity - Mac Viruses 17 March 2008 21:18:46
Free Online Legal Research: The Public Library of Law
The Public Library of Law is a new free online legal research website, billed as the “largest free law library in the world,” created the makers of the commercial online legal research system Fastcase. The Public Library of Law features cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals, cases from all 50 states back to 1997, federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states, regulations, court rules, constitutions, and other legal information. The Public Library of lacks the breadth, depth, and many of the advanced features of commercial legal research services like Lexis and Westlaw. As such, it may be best viewed as a free starting point for legal research, to be followed up in more comprehensive sources. Transactional-based pricing is available for several Lexis and Westlaw searches and features, including transaction-based Shepards and KeyCite, which may be useful for researchers using free services like the Public Library of Law or commercial services like Fastcase which don’t have equivalently sophisticated citator features. 17 March 2008 21:05:37
Google Sites: Online Collaboration and Project Management Tool
Google unveiled a new online collaboration tool named Google Sites in late February of this year. Sites is designed to be used as an online project management/website authoring/collaboration tool, boasting features typically associated with intranets, extranets, and Wikis. Online reviewers have discussed Google Sites as a potential competitor to collaboration software such as 37 Signals’ Basecamp, Microsoft Sharepoint, PBwiki, and offerings from Zoho. Sites is part of the Google Apps line, which includes a free Team Edition, a free Standard Edition, and a fee-based Premier Edition. Users used to the quick process of signing up gaining near immediate access to programs like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Gmail may be disappointed to hear that use of Google Sites requires the use of a registered web domain name. The administrator of the registered web domain will have the ultimate administrative authority over any of the Google Sites projects associated with that domain name. Google Sites so far has garnered mixed reviews--it will be interesting to see if any substantial improvements will be released in the near future. Early Reviews of Google Sites:
Other Resources:
17 March 2008 20:44:31
JD Supra: Multi-faceted Online Legal Document Repository
JD Supra is a free legal document repository site which allows users to upload and download various documents such as filings, legal decisions, forms, newsletters, and articles. According to their “About Us” page, JD Supra “promotes the free exchange of information to benefit the legal community, legal consumers, the media and the general public.” JD Supra functions as a lawyer directory as well as a document repository. Users who upload documents can create a profile detailing information about their educational background, legal practice, career accomplishments, and other relevant information (however, it appears that any type of users, not just lawyers, can upload documents). People researching specific legal topics on JD Supra can thus be led to the profiles of lawyers who have uploaded relevant legal documents. There are several other online user-content driven document repositories featuring legal documents such as docstoc and Scribd. Users of these sites must beware, of course—with user-submitted sites like JD Supra, Docstoc and Scribd, there is no easy way to assess the quality, validity, authenticity, and authorship of any given document. As such, it might be safer to view the documents as a starting point for information gathering as opposed to viewing them as any sort of finished, authentic, and accurate product. Thus, these sites may be useful in the same way that Wikipedia can be useful, as a starting point for gathering initial research, which must then be followed up with research in more trustworthy information sources. 17 March 2008 14:23:52
ABA TECHSHOW 2008 Roundup
ABA TECHSHOW 2008 has come to a close, but the discussion about the technology tools and practices demonstrated at the conference are just beginning. Here’s a sampling of some of the TECHSHOW-related blog posts from around the legal technology community: Monica Bay's The Common Scold: Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog: Reid My Blog: Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs: Dennis Kennedy: TechnoLawyer Blog: See any other good TECHSHOW coverage that we've missed? Let us know! ADDED: Dominic Jaar's Wines and Information Management Blog: 10 March 2008 21:02:44
iPhone Grows Up: Business Features On The Way
Apple’s iPhone may have been a smash hit with consumers when it was released last June, but many business users – including lawyers – were kept away by the device’s lack of corporate features. All that may change, however, as Apple recently announced that it was bringing a host of enterprise features to the phone, including Exchange ActiveSync for push email, calendars, and contacts, as well as Cisco VPN and remote wiping abilities. These features may finally position the iPhone to act as a true competitor to Research in Motion’s ubiquitous BlackBerry smartphones. Also announced was the release of the iPhone SDK – a toolkit that will allow software developers to write programs specifically for the iPhone. iPhone owners will then be able to use the iTunes App Store to load third-party software directly onto their phones, something that had previously required warranty-voiding hacks and elaborate workarounds. Previously on ABA Site-tation: - Apple's iPhone: Proceed with Caution 06 March 2008 21:25:23
Cheap and easy data backup
We all know the importance of backing up our data, but research indicates that we aren't doing it. According to Macworld Magazine only four percent of Macintosh users were found to perform regular backups. Apple made it simpler with their latest operating system, but inexpensive options are now available that make it simple for both Mac and PC users. You can walk into several popular electronic stores or go online and for less than $200 purchase a fast, external drive with 500 GB of storage space. Many of these drives are PC and Mac compatible and preinstalled with automatic backup software that will get you started on your backup schedule within the hour. How cool is that? 500 GB is a nice, round number and a lot of space. According to the Western Digital website, 500 GB will store the following:
With all this extra space, make sure that you create an image of your drive and back it up as well. (See FYI: Data Backup - Disk Imaging and Backup Software) In the event of a disaster, it can take several days to re-install your operating system, applications and data from CDs and backups. With an image file, you can restore your pc system, applications and data within several hours. Do your research. There are great prices to be had in stores as well as online. Recently Best Buy had a Seagate external drive, included with backup software, for $119. Below are 500 GB models of four popular hard drive manufacturers for your consideration. Additional Resources 27 February 2008 21:47:51
GovTech: information technology for state and local governments
Since 2001 when we first featured the Government Technology website, this site has undergone a few changes. It has been completely redesigned and has a new domain name, govtech.com. The tagline is “Solutions for state and local government in the information age” and the website continues to deliver. On the start page there are six tabs; Home, Digital Communities, Video, Events, My Briefcase, and Advertise. Home is the starting point for the Government Technology website. On this page links to articles and videos co-exist with sponsor advertisements. You can access broad topics by clicking on the aforementioned tabs running across the top of the page. From the left side of the page, content is listed by more specific topics and subtopics including Government Topics (Contract News, divided by Federal, Local, and State government; Cyber Security, Economic Development/E-Gov News, Education, Emergency Management, Enterprise, GIS, Health & Human Services, Justice, Policy, Public Safety and Shared Services), Digital Communities, Multimedia, Events, Industry Perspectives and the Magazine Sites. Digital Communities was launched in 2005 in response to requests from cities and counties around the country for comprehensive local government IT best practices. It consists of both a website and a quarterly print magazine. Video is Government Technology television (GTtv) Government Videos. Like a You Tube for government, you can watch video channels that include Technology News, Green IT, a CIO Center, Events & Keynotes, and IT Topic Interviews as well as the Top Rated videos and Sponsored Videos. Events is a bulletin board for Government Events across the country. Upcoming conferences, workshops and summits are featured by various state, local and municipal governments. My Briefcase is similar to an RSS feed reader where you setup an account in order to specify which news, events, resources or subscriptions you want to follow, save and share. There’s a tutorial that will walk you through the process. Advertise is an access portal to all of the Government Technology publications for vendors eager to reach out to the government technology market. Govtech.com is a comprehensive collection of resources and continues to be a good starting point for anyone looking for more information about how technology is being used and shaped by state, local, and the federal government. 27 February 2008 15:24:07
New FYI: Corporate Counsel, Contracts and Compliance
Updating corporate minutes, maintaining compliance with contract regulations and managing legal entity information are routine transactional matters. However, when the routine is not maintained chaos and scandal can result. These matters are typically the purview of the legal department. In consideration of the ongoing effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the recent anniversary of sweeping amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we've revisited the resources that are unique to the special needs of law departments rather than law firms. See our new FYI: Corporate Counsel, Contracts and Compliance 22 February 2008 17:15:38
Know Your Responsibilities: Data Breach Notification
As it becomes standard practice for attorneys to maintain client files in a digital format, data breaches and similar technology-based security threats become a far more significant concern. While much has been said about preventing data breaches, far less is said about an attorney’s (or any business owner’s) obligations following the data breach – particularly the duty to notify effected clients. For a convenient starting point to determining what legal obligations you may have in the event of such a data breach, check out the Data Breach Notification Laws map created by CSOonline. Simply click on your state, or any state you’re curious about, for a brief summary of their current laws regarding data breach notification. If the state has applicable legislation, you can click on the summary for a link to the full text. 21 February 2008 14:53:55
Managing Online Research with Firefox and Internet Explorer 7's Multiple Tab Bookmarking Features
If you use a tabbed browser and have ever wished for a way to quickly bookmark multiple tabs for browsing later, such as when you have a number of web pages on a relevant topic open in your browser for a research project, you’re in luck. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 allow you to bookmark multiple tabs at once, save them into a folder of your liking, and later conveniently open them all at once. In Internet Explorer 7, you can bookmark a group of tabs by clicking on the “Add to Favorites” button (the gold star with the green plus sign at the top left of the browser window) and then selecting “Add Tab Group to Favorites,” then select a folder to add the bookmarks to or create a new folder. To open the group of tabs all at once, click on the “Favorites” button (the gold star), move your mouse over the folder with the bookmarks you want to open, and click on the blue arrow that appears. In Firefox 2 you can bookmark a group of tabs by selecting “Bookmark All Tabs” in the Bookmarks menu, then select an existing folder or create a new folder to put the tabs in. To open the group of tabs all at once select the folder under the Bookmarks tab, and select the “Open All In Tabs” option that appears at the bottom of the list of all of the bookmarks in the folder. There is a hitch in Firefox 2--under the default settings, when you choose to open a group of tabs all at once, any tabs you had already open will be closed. To change this, enter the text “about:config” (without the quotation marks) in your browser’s location bar, find the entry “browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace,” and change the “true” setting in the “value” column to “false” by double clicking on it. This problem is apparently remedied in Firefox 3, which is currently available only in beta version. For more information on tabbed browsing, see the LTRC's article “Fire(fox) Up Your Browser!” 12 February 2008 18:34:09
Avoid Sanctions, Keep Critical E-mail Messages Out of Your Spam Box With E-mail Whitelists
E-mail whitelisting is a topic that Jim Calloway posted about awhile back, but is still vitally important in case you missed it. The gist is that very important e-mail messages, such as court notices of hearings, may be put into a spam box by your e-mail programs, causing you to disastrously miss important deadlines and face court sanctions and other negative outcomes. To expand upon the post, here are some tips on how to whitelist important e-mail addresses in Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Microsoft Outlook Creating an e-mail whitelist in Microsoft Outlook involves adding the desired e-mail addresses or domains to the “Safe Senders” or “Safe Recipients” lists. You can select to have e-mail addresses in your Contacts list be added to the Safe Senders list, and can select to have anyone you e-mail automatically be added to the Safe Senders list. For more information, including the differences between the Safe Senders and Safe Recipients lists, see: Hotmail Creating an e-mail whitelist in Hotmail involves adding the desired e-mail addresses or domains to a “Safe List.” Gmail According to Google, “If you find that some senders' messages are consistently being mislabeled as spam, you can prevent this by adding their email addresses to your Contacts list. Gmail will deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox, unless they meet these criteria.” Google lists certain criteria which if met will prevent this whitelist tactic from working, including if the “To” and “From” addresses for an e-mail message are the same. Now, this is a big problem, because people often will send legitimate e-mails where the primary “To” field is filled in with their own e-mail address, and a list of recipients is included in the blind contact/BCC field, with the purpose of sending a message to numerous people but preventing the recipients from being able to view each other’s e-mail addresses—even if you have added the sender’s e-mail address to your contacts list, this type of e-mail message may still end up in your spam box. Until Google adds a dedicated whitelisting function for Gmail, be sure to check your spam box daily to see if any legitimate e-mail messages, even e-mail messages from senders whose addresses you have placed in your Contacts list, have been erroneously placed there and which might otherwise escape your notice. See: Yahoo! Mail Unlike Microsoft Outlook and Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail does not yet feature a dedicated whitelist/safe list for e-mail addresses. Some writers online have suggested that creating a filter designed to route e-mail messages from specific e-mail addresses to your inbox and adding those e-mail addresses to your address book/contacts list can prevent messages from those address from being sent to your spam box/bulk mail box, but there is no official word from Yahoo on whether these methods work. In the meantime, if you try these methods, be sure to check your spam box/bulk mail box daily to see if legitimate mail was erroneously placed there which might otherwise escape your notice. Other resources:
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Technology News
Just Released: Volumes 1 and 2 of the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report Caution Travelers: Laptops May Be Subject to Suspicionless Searches at the Border Roll Out the Red Carpet: 2008 Webby Awards Hearings on Online Legal Services Time Saver: One Stop Shipping
Law Office Technology
Mind Your Metadata: Don't Reveal Strategic Information Through Hidden Comments, Tracked Changes, and Document Properties Just Released: Volumes 1 and 2 of the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report Outsourcing for Solos and Small firms: Virtual Paralegals Journler: Casemap Replacement for Mac Users? USB Flash Drives: Productivity Tool and Security Gap |