I KNOW it's one of the fastest, easiest forms of communication, but tell me, does anyone feel 100 per cent comfortable with e-mail?

And if not, why do they insist on using it for anything and everything?

Strife caused by e-mail messages is becoming a regular fixture in the tabloid press. Either it's the Football Association - with Faria Alam playing a pivotal role - or City types, whose private e-mails appear to whiz around the globe at the speed of light.

It should not come as a surprise - after all, it's a simple case of keying in a few addresses, pressing the 'forward' button, and Bob's your uncle.

The subject matter does not have to be up to much in terms of public interest, but - as in the case of the wealthy London lawyer who demanded £4 from a secretary for spilling ketchup on his trousers - the more people who see it and talk about it, the faster it assumes an importance that belies its triviality. It seems that, in an e-mail, nothing is sacred.

Not that letters are wholly innocent of stirring up trouble. On many occasions in the past they have implicated people in affairs of the heart and in crime, and they will continue to do so.

But e-mails are different. Their immediacy and margin for error makes them scary. "Don't send this back or Robin will see it", a friend of mine pleaded at the end of an e-mail detailing her marital problems. After reading it, I had to rush off on the school run and couldn't reply immediately. I responded later that night but woke in the early hours fretting that I had tagged my e-mail on to the end of hers. I rang her the next day and thankfully, I had sent it separately.

It is so easy to bash the wrong key in a hurry. At least with a letter you have time to mull things over - you have to write it, then buy a stamp, then take a trip to the post box.

And another thing with e-mails is their lack of confidentiality. I recently received a joke e-mail from a friend in America. It was about as funny as a trip to the dentist. I could see how some people might find it amusing to see a herd of animals dressed up and strolling down a shopping mall, but not me.

Yet here I was, one of a ten-strong list of people who were obviously considered to have the same wacky sense of humour. To think that these individuals now had my details was unsettling. Any day now I'm expecting to receive a photograph of a sheep in a jacuzzi or a cow in a multi-gym from wayne@backwoodsUSA.net or some such.

Most people would never dream of distributing their friends' home addresses around all and sundry, so why is an e-mail any different?

Your address should be confidential, but with e-mail nothing is firmly under wraps. At work I have my own passwords, but the IT experts can still gain access if they want to, and check that I'm not downloading things that may spark a police raid.

Give me the telephone any day, or the trusty letter. At least you're not exposing yourself to every oddball on the planet, and there's no chance of opening the Daily Mirror to read about your after-hours rendezvous with the boss on the top of the multi-storey car park.

Updated: 11:08 Tuesday, July 12, 2005