Alonso’s Misdeeds Prove the Power of Email
Even if you’re not a fan of Formula One, the recent espionage scandal concerning Team McLaren might interest you. After all, where else would a $100,000,000 fine virtually not matter?
Some people would quietly condemn World Champion Fernando Alonso, one of the people implicated by investigators, for his carelessness. The slam dunk evidence were his emails to a contact, which proved illegal knowledge of top-secret competitor data.
But, the entire controversy also shows that while email is a potential cause of your downfall (Mark Foley anyone?), it can also protect you. It’s relatively strong proof of the agreements you made and recent actions.
Email is a “body of evidence” you can refer to in case there are any misunderstandings. It may be an argument over the final price, the required output, the number of revisions, or even the agreed upon color scheme. The point is that by checking old emails, you can easily find out who was right.
That’s why you should never delete your old emails. If your ISP doesn’t let you store that much on the email account they provided, you can always use great webmail services like Gmail. Maintaining a long-term (if not lifetime) record of your email is good for your freelance career. It lets you deal with misunderstandings on a timely basis, and helps you protect yourself, ensuring that you get what’s promised.
Ironically, this is another practice I learned from the corporate world, where politics requires you have to keep a record of anything for your own protection (I never regret proving my colleagues accusation that I failed to forward him the specs was wrong). Granted, in the freelance world the need isn’t as urgent. Still, who wouldn’t want to make sure all ends of deal are upheld?
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POSTED IN: Living as a Freelancer, Useful Tools
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