E-MAIL wars are fought with neither bullets nor bloodshed, but can go on for days on end, sapping the warring parties and wasting time.

Relationship manager Kevin Siew, 36, has seen many such wars break out as a result of one party hitting the 'send' key without thinking.

Along comes a tool to defuse the fallout from offensive e-mail messages - a Gmail application called Mail Goggles, which promises to 'prevent many of you out there from sending messages you will wish you hadn't'.

It is the Internet version of counting to 10 when you are angry. Before the e-mail goes out, Mail Goggles throws you five mathematical sums and prompts you to calculate the answers.

With a message reading 'Are you sure you want to send this? Answer some simple maths problems to verify', the application unleashes a psychological effect: It forces one to cool down and think about whether to send off the mail.

This is useful for hotheaded individuals who can sour personal and professional relationships with e-mail sent out in the heat of the moment.

Mr Siew said: 'It does not only take place in the office - a war with your boss is bad enough, but with my friends and me too. Apart from affecting relationships, e-mail battles can lead to permanent cold wars in real life.'

Manager Dawn Tan, 31, said the problem can also hurt business. The suppliers with whom she works, for example, send out rude e-mail messages in apparent disregard for how their business might be hit.

Ms Debbie Swee, an IDC new media market analyst, said the rising popularity of instant messaging (IM) and other Web 2.0 tools are likely to have contributed to e-mail taking on the short, single-liner, conversational - and impulsive - nature of IM.

Mail Goggles has similar predecessors to help the too-hasty: IBM Lotus Notes 8.0, unveiled last year, and Microsoft Outlook allow users to recall e-mail messages sent 'by mistake' - provided the recipient has not opened the mail.

A Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) survey done last year identified e-mailing as the No. 1 Internet activity among Singaporeans.

But being practised in e-mailing has not bred circumspection.

Ms Shirlyn Tan, 34, who has been in human resources here for 12 years, has observed that Singaporeans working in multinational corporations alongside other nationalities tend to be ruder and more impulsive, preferring to 'shoot out e-mail than discuss things face to face'.

This can affect workplace ties; worse, a bad reputation can stall or even tank one's career, she said.

Ms Angelyn Bow, 26, who has been in customer service for five years, has handled abusive e-mail from Singaporeans who 'seem to feel they can vent their anger on the spot by hitting the 'send' button'.

What some people fail to realise is that e-mail sent out in haste can come back to haunt them - they can be used as evidence in criminal or civil lawsuits.

Apart from possibly landing one in court, it lowers productivity.

A July 2006 study by ClearContext, an e-mail management tools vendor, surveyed 250 users and found 56 per cent of them spending more than two hours a day in their in-box.

By January this year, it found nearly four in 10 respondents handling more than 100 pieces of e-mail a day.

The chances of any of these erupting into e-mail wars is good, because with e-mail chat rooms and instant messaging, 'people take the gloves off much more quickly than they do in person', said Mr John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.

Time to hit that 'Recall mail' button - or install Mail Goggles.

tanwz@sph.com.sg

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