International Law

A promise like that would require lawyers, money, and probably guns

This is brilliant:

FAQs about Mailinator

What is Mailinator's official privacy policy?

The official policy is something like: At Mailinator, THERE IS NONE. Expect that any email you send or have sent here can be viewed by anyone. Mailinator/ManyBrain does NOT ask, require or even want any of your personal information. This service is not much different than the existing Usenet; anything you put out there is world-viewable. Keep that in mind.

So if the government issued a subpeona to Mailinator to divulge emails or logs, you'd rat me out?

Holy crap, yes. I'm not going to jail for you, I have a boyish face and very (very) supple skin.

That said, Mailinator keeps very little for any length of time. Mailinator can be a useful privacy tool.

Privacy is a serious issue, and we want to be clear. We think Mailinator can provide pretty decent privacy, and we want to keep providing that and even improve it, but we can't promise it. A promise like that would require lawyers, money, and probably guns - and since we provide Mailinator for free, we don't have any of those.

This was forwarded to me by a friend, who I expect has better things to do than ferret out that most elusive creature: the funny privacy statement.

Update: I should have guessed it .... PGuy is too busy doing deals in NYC to be reading FAQs. He got it from Rick Segal: The Best FAQ in the World.

Full post as published by The Canadian Privacy Law Blog on July 21, 2008 (boomark / email).