Home / Security and data

A general agreement does not authorise a specific send

An agreement given on a working method validates the way of proceeding, not a send whose content has not yet been shown: the approval to send names the text and the recipients, or the category of sends that a standing authorisation itself designates.

Typical case: a person approves the working method for a batch of messages, and her answer is then read as an authorisation to send. The messages go out to outside recipients before their text and their list have been shown to her.

What a method agreement covers

An agreement given on a plan in several steps validates the shape of the plan, not each of its details. A short answer, agreed or carry on, given on a way of proceeding, names neither the text that will go out nor the recipients, since this content does not yet exist when it is given. Among the steps of a batch, sending to a third party has a status of its own: a file written or a search run can be corrected as long as nobody outside has seen them, a message that has gone out is hard to catch back. Some mail systems offer a recall, but Outlook's documentation reserves it for recipients in the same organisation who have not yet opened the message: an outside customer is beyond its reach.

Why the confusion recurs

A word like agreed applies equally to a method and to a send, and its form does not say which of the two it covers: it is the question asked just before that decides. Naming the content and the recipients in the request removes the ambiguity, since the question can then only be read one way.

A standing authorisation also exists, and it is legitimate when it names the category it covers itself, for example the acknowledgements of receipt of a form, with a text fixed once and for all. It is also the right form for a batch too large to be shown message by message, such as several hundred personalised texts: the agreement then covers the text template, the personalisation rule and the source list, named together. What does not hold is the silent extension of a method agreement to a send it did not name.

A template for the request

Request for approval of this send:

Exact content: [paste the final text of the message, word for word, or the template and its personalisation rule]
Recipients: [list each address, or name the source list and the criterion that produces it]
Scope: this approval applies to this batch of messages and to it alone
Question: do you approve sending this text to these recipients?

The lesson on the human checkpoint before an irreversible action sets out the same principle for a file deletion: the check goes before the action that cannot be undone.