ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Communicating in business
Hana, a manager, sends a highly sensitive redundancy proposal to the whole department by email by pressing 'reply all' by mistake. Which weakness of email does this best illustrate?
The incident shows that email can easily be misdirected and cannot reliably be recalled once sent. Speed and ease of distribution create confidentiality risk. Email is in fact fast, storable and able to carry attachments, so the other statements are incorrect.
- AMessages can be easily misdirected and cannot be recalled reliably once sentCorrect
- BEmail cannot be stored for future reference
- CEmail is always slower than postal mail
- DEmail cannot carry attachments
Explanation
Email's ease of distribution means messages can reach unintended recipients, and recall is unreliable. The other statements are false: email is fast, can be stored and supports attachments.
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