This time in '99: Virtual love meets Playboy

NEWS Yes, another Valentine's Day is here and while school children are measuring their popularity with Valentine's cards, office workers all over the UK are awaiting flowers and chocolates from lovers, friends and family. This time last year, virtual love was blooming for British workers...
This is how the original story broke just before Valentine's Day, 1999: Email is becoming an increasingly important part of the Valentine's Day ritual, according to a study from UK secretarial agency Office Angels. The research found that nearly three-quarters of office workers engage in email flirting. One in four of these are flirting with colleagues. Eighty per cent would be happy to send their Valentines over the Net. But Nick Lockett, lawyer at UK firm Sidley & Austin, warned that unwanted inter-office messages could land the sender in a sexual harassment suit. He cited an example where emails aided a woman in a lawsuit against her co-worker. "At first glance, the email looks like flirting," said Lockett. "But the flirting was all one way. You see her responses and realise she's telling this person, 'Please stop this. It's not appropriate.'" He said companies wishing to protect themselves from business litigation often keep files that can't be edited to use as evidence if necessary. So email, he warned, doesn't just disappear. And according to the Office Angels study, that is just as well - most respondents preferred face-to-face rendezvous. And, while we're on the subject, another sexy story from Valentine's Day 1999: Playboy sues Excite and Netscape for namedropping US men's magazine, Playboy has filed a lawsuit against Netscape and Excite claiming the Internet search engines are making advertising money out of its trademark name. The issue revolves around keyword selling - a practice where companies pay a search engine so their banner ads appear when users search for a particular keyword. An Excite search for the word 'playboy' returns Playboy as the first search choice, but also returns banner ads for unrelated pornography sites.