No, this is not a story from The Onion.
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One of the tastier revelations from the emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has released is the fact that she asked to borrow a copy of a book called Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better.
Among its incredibly detailed advice for how to email persuasively, effectively, and efficiently, we find a chapter entitled “The Email That Can Land You in Jail.” (Yes, really.)
Perhaps of most interest to Clinton, who reportedly turned over an entirely blank email server to the FBI, is the fact that the chapter includes instructions on how to make sure deleted emails are gone for good. “Some people are hoarders, some are checkers,” the Send book explains. “The main thing to consider is that once you do decide to delete, it’s like taking the garbage from your kitchen and putting it in your hallway. It’s still there.”
To really make compromising messages go away, the book suggests, get a rewriting program “to make sure that it’s not just elsewhere on the drive but has in fact been written over sixteen or twenty times and rendered undefinable.”
And while the jail chapter in Send makes clear it presumes readers haven’t actually committed any crimes, perhaps the writers wouldn’t be so certain of that if they knew Clinton was among their audience: A recent poll found most Americans agree that Clinton’s behavior is suspicious enough to warrant a criminal investigation.