Your e-mail archive and your sent folder only tell half the story…what you sent, NOT what was received.  You have NO proof of either the DELIVERY or CONTENT of your email or attachments!

While e-mail users are becoming more aware of the electronic record they have created, it is important to consider these electronic records can serve as a critically important defense for business transactions, if properly managed.

In the case of a dispute over content, timing, sending or receiving of an e-mail, the archiving of that e-mail in electronic or printed form provides very little protection after the fact.  With two clicks of the mouse, one could change anything in standard e-mail and represent it to be the original e-mail.  Therefore, it is important to consider that the recipient of an important e-mail transaction could alter the original e-mail and then subsequently challenge the sender’s archived copy as being fraudulent.  Also, the fact that something appears in a “sent” folder does not mean that it was ever sent – one can drag anything into that folder.

It really is that easy to alter an e-mail record

Registered E-mail® messages hold far greater evidential weight than traditional mail, courier, fax, or e-mail, and therefore, should provide the sender with protection that will stand up to scrutiny in a dispute resolution situation.  Registered E-mail® would provide the sender the upper hand in any legal discovery disputes.

From the perspective of a mediator, arbitrator, or judicial officer, one looks first at the evidentiary value of what is submitted in gauging its trustworthiness.  Evidential weight is about reducing uncertainty surrounding the evidence.  The party with the greater evidential weight will win in most cases, or at least mitigate its liability.

Just when you need your e-mail record to stand up to scrutiny, your opposition could simply claim that: “they did not receive your e-mail”-- (the critical e-mail you represented as sent and received) or “that is not what your e-mail said” when they received it.  Or worse, someone could deliberately manipulate your e-mail, print it out, and represent it as the truth.  With standard e-mail records and archives, you are exposed to such challenges without the necessary defense.

Registered E-mail® services allow the sender to prove that they have complied with the bylaw, contractual, or regulated notification provision.  While using USPS first class mail, the presumption of “delivery” is evidenced where you have a record of sending; however, under the Uniform Electronic Transaction Act, e-mail "delivery" is evidenced when the recipient's agent, their mail server, has accepted the entire data transmission.  Therefore, under electronic statutes, the burden is on the sender to prove "receipt" of the e-mail, which is one of the key features of the RPost system.

Further, provisions of electronic law and recent court decisions underscore the fact that e-business systems require proper transaction documentation.  Often there is a requirement for a reliable recordkeeping management system that can record, retrieve and authenticate electronic messages involving important business communications and transactions (both content of e-mail and attachments, and official time sent and received).  The RPost Registered Receipt e-mail is a simple, elegant solution to record retention and proof of notice compliance requirements.

Registered E-mail® enhances a company’s capability to classify, store, and manage the enormous volume of electronic communications.

From a sender’s perspective or an organizational perspective, if an electronic message was deemed important enough to have been sent via “Registered E-mail” then someone, through automated policies or ad-hoc, has classified that e-mail as important enough to then be recorded and archived.  Therefore, a first level of classification would be “Registered” = important and archive with distinct policies.  Note:  In addition to the benefits of the Registered Receipt e-mail, the Registered E-mail® service also has the inherent capability of classifying messages with client or customer codes or other significant identifiers.

The Registered E-mail® service seamlessly plugs into virtually any e-mail archive or compliance solution.  As a rule of thumb, if your system manages e-mail records, you can easily add Registered E-mail® services to it.