Almost half of office workers have sent an email to the wrong person by mistake, often with 'disastrous' consequences.

A young woman sent a highly explicit message meant for her boyfriend to her line manager instead, while another forwarded a rant against a company boss to the man himself.

Research among 500 office staff by recruitment firm Pertemps also showed two out of three had copied people into an email message list by mistake.

Workers were urged to check emails in a bid to avoid e-calamities such as those in the survey, including an unfortunate job-seeker who sent an email boasting about the elaborate lies on his CV - to the human resources director of the company he had just applied to.

Thursday March 04, 2004