End-of-mail disclaimer notice cannot be deleted

[skylark53]

I recently received email from a local council, containing a page-long disclaimer notice at the bottom.

It is policy in our office when forwarding messages to remove footers, signatures, disclaimers, taglines, images, copies of previous mail exchanges, etc, wherever possible, to save paper & carbon emissions when messages must be printed.

When I forwarded this mail to others in my office, I was relieved to see that the text was not present and therefore did not need to be deleted.

To my dismay, however, the forwarded copies contained the long, ugly disclaimer. So does the printed copy I made for our files.

The "hidden text " box is ticked when I invoke Word 2003 to forward mail. But nothing appears; the disclaimer is invisible. There is also no attachment to the message.

So my question is, how was this text piggybacked into the mail, and what can be done to remove it on forwarding or printing? Thanks for any suggestions.

for info: we use Outlook 2003 on Windows XP Pro, SP3.

Edited August 12, 2011 by skylark53

[skylark53]

Apparently it's some sort of security thing, added after composition by the sender's server, and intended to be undeletable.

Anyone feel challenged by this? PM me if you have a solution you don't want to share here.