Advantages and Disadvantages of Email

Advantages of email

1. Fast and cheap
2. Ideal way to reach persons who are difficult to get on the phone (e.g. most physicians!)
3. Because it is written, you can compose and review your message before sending
4. Ideal for international communications (expense, problems reaching colleagues, differences in time zones)
5. Convenient and non-intrusive: I typically review and answer emails late at night after the kids have gone to bed
6. You can check your email from any computer in the world; e.g., while visiting, from a hotel room, in your car, etc.
7. You can easily include all or part of previous messages, or the message you are responding to, including point by point responses to questions, etc.
8. Ability to send same message to predefined groups of people
9. Ability to include attached files, documents, pictures, datasets
10. Messages easily archivable and storable in a database; search by sender, date, subject, or put into separate mailboxes
11. Ability to paste from other applications directly into email document (e.g., a review of a paper found on a website)

Disadvantages of email

1. You don't always know when/if your message has been read (some email programs notify sender when email has been read)
2. Privacy issues
   • Interception: By company, hospital, university administration, or by unauthorized snoops on the Web (email can be encrypted)
   • Difficult to delete: Emails are stored in a variety of places on computer disks. Difficult to completely erase and destroy.
   • Masquerade: Someone can masquerade as you; send emails in your name. No unique signature.
   • Forwarding function: A recipient can remail a sender's message to a large number of people; e.g., you criticize the boss, and your colleague forwards your critical letter to all the employees in the company
3. Easy to get swamped (but you can filter and sort messages)
4. A hazard for emotionally "fiery" people; you get mad, you fire off an email, the recipient forwards it to 10 other people, including the target of your anger, and you pay the consequences for many months to come.