Email bankruptcy is deleting or ignoring all

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

s older than a certain date, due to an overwhelming volume of messages. The term is usually attributed to author

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...

in 2004, though it can also be attributed to

Sherry Turkle Sherry Turkle (born June 18, 1948) is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She obtained an BA in social studies and later a PhD in sociology and perso ...

in 2002. An insurmountable volume or backlog of legitimate messages (e.g. on return from an extended absence) usually leads to bankruptcy. During the act of declaring email bankruptcy, a message is usually sent to all senders explaining the problem, that their message has been deleted, and that if their message still requires a response they should resend their message. Similarly, the inability to maintain an overview over messages in an

instant messenger Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and tri ...

chat room may be referred to as "chat room bankruptcy".

References

Email Internet terminology {{Internet-stub