【Film noir Archives】

It's the year 2020,Film noir Archives three years after the Donald Trump Jr. email debacle that toppled a presidency and changed the way we communicate.

Around the world, billions of email accounts were shuttered and servers shut down. The communicating world marched en masseto secure platforms like WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, and Signal.

Email is dead.

Except, it's not 2020, it's still 2017, just days after Donald Trump Jr. sought to get ahead of news reports on his 2016 meeting with someone promising to deliver damaging information about former democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton by releasing the entire email thread on Twitter.

Donald Trump Sr. is still president and email is very much alive, and will remain so for decades if not longer.

Leaving aside the astounding contents of Donald Trump Jr.'s email thread, it was another reminder that things we say digitally, on virtually any platform, may come back to haunt us.

Some believe, this is also the beginning of the end for email, our least secure communication platform that mindlessly stores every reply, forward, broadcast, and carbon copy. When someone sends you a lengthy email request for an upcoming project and you reply, "Sure!" both texts are saved. Many have argued over the years that we need to stop replying with "Thanks" "Yes!" and "You're welcome." No one takes this advice, including Donald Trump Jr.

This morning, New York Timestech columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote passionately and, for the most part, correctly, about what a bonehead move it is to use email for this kind of communication.

Email is great for business, newsletters, 12-hour Sales Codes!, and low-key conversations about the day's, week's and month's work. But it's a terrible platform for secrets.

Don Jr.'s email was about a secret. At some point early in his email communication with Rob Goldstone, it would have been a good idea to email, "Let's take this offline" instead of, "I love it especially later in the summer."

However, Manjoo's contention that this is, the "last hurrah," of email is wishful thinking at best.

Let's look at some recent stats from the research firm Radicati. Its Email Statistics Report, 2015-2019 states, "Worldwide email use continues to grow at a healthy pace."

There were, Radicati notes, 2.6 billion email users in 2015 and they predict 2.9 billion by late 2019. That is almost a billion more than use Facebook, the world's most popular social network with its own communication platform, Facebook Messenger, which has 1.2 Billion users.

Not only will more people join the email army, but Radicati predicts that the number of email accounts per person will grow, too (from 1.7 to 1.9 in 2019).

Even the volume of emails we send isn't decreasing and it will, according to the report, grow a steady 5% per year through 2019. Average numbers of email sent and received will grow, as well.

Many of us receive news-filled newsletters each morning. They are, apparently, big business and popular among those millennials who might otherwise shun email.

My point is: Just because Don Jr. made the same bonehead mistake as the Democratic party and Sony Pictures, doesn't mean anyone is about to alter their email usage patterns or behavior.

Use of secure, end-to-end-encrypted messaging systems will grow, especially among younger users who prefer to communicate that way. But those same users are also being raised on Google Docs and Gmail, primarily in their schools. By the time they leave high school, they've had a school-sponsored Gmail account for almost a decade.

In college, they will still communicate with professors via email (probably gmail) and may send and receive assignments that way.

Email use is part of our digital DNA and I'd argue that it's not what needs to change.

I'm a heavy email user. In fact, I probably overuseemail, but I do rely on it for quick access to old thoughts, conversations and contacts that I didn't commit to a database. Email is still the way I reach out to new and existing contacts (especially when I can't get them on the phone). In email, as in all my other digital interactions, I seek never to email or post anything I wouldn't want to say out loud or to someone's face.

Sure, there are emails I receive under the promise of embargo containing "secret" information that can't be shared until a specified date. That's part of my job and I don't want those messages stored in WhatsApp or Signal. Especially because digital assets like videos, photos and documentation often accompany the email message.

Since email will never go away -- seriously, never -- it's time for a simple refresher on potential law-breaking activities on the platform.

If someone promises you damaging information about another person, take it offline immediately. Follow the lead of drug dealers: Get a burner phone and have the conversation that way.

This is pretty basic stuff, right?

Oh, and enjoy your mail.