Careless staff leaking company secrets by email

Email may be one of business' favourite ways to shift information between colleagues and customers but apparently a large number of companies are sending confidential content to people they shouldn't.

A survey commissioned by mail-filtering firm SurfControl found 39 per cent of workers had discovered information not meant for them landing in their inboxes and 15 per cent said they had sent confidential data to the wrong people.

While a few erstwhile employees might be happy to ignore protocol – sneaking off with customer lists via email when changing jobs – most of the content that goes astray is an accident. People hit reply to all or accidentally let Outlook fill in the recipient only to find the wrong name in the frame.

Martino Corbelli, marketing director for SurfControl, said: "Nine out of 10 times, it's not malicious, it's people hitting the wrong button who wouldn't dream of doing it on purpose."

Comparing the results from this survey with a similar study undertaken two years ago, the problem is much worse now, he added, but a mixture of policies, education and filtering can help the problem.

IT staff fared far worse than their human resources counterparts. 45 per cent of IT professionals have received content they shouldn't while just 23 per cent of HR workers could say the same.