Dear World: Loose Lips Sink More Than Ships Ms. Turkle of M.I.T. says that many Americans equate e-mail with paper mail, which enjoys strong legal, and social, protections against snooping. Even though they know e- mail might not be secure, she said, many people think of it as being like talking with friends in a bar. "You're surrounded by other people but you don't experience those other people as having a microphone at your table," she said. Ms. Turkle also notes that sending and receiving e-mail are very different experiences. Composition occurs in a zone of intimacy, which leads people to write things they might not otherwise risk broadcasting to the world. "The act of composing e-mail occurs within your private mindspace," she said. "The only place where people are quiet and not being bombarded is in front of the machine." But the recipient is often in a completely different state of mind. "A hundred messages come up; the experience of receiving this thing is that you are being bombarded," Ms. Turkle said. This breeds an attitude that no e-mail should be taken too seriously. Instead, the harried recipient thinks, "Oh, cool, I'll pass this on," and with a mouse click sends a piece of correspondence around the world, like a computer virus.