Beware - in this age of kiss-and-tell stories and rampant litigation - emails can come back to haunt you.

People are deliberately saving them to use as evidence against the sender, it was revealed yesterday.

The dangers of firing off electronic missives without thinking are revealed in a poll by email provider Lycos UK.

Stockpiling emails, as two-thirds of 2,600 questioned say they do, has increased the risk of private messages being forwarded to friends or colleagues, or accidentally being sent to the wrong person.

A quarter of office workers admitted they held on to work-related emails to use in future disputes.

A further 21 per cent said they hoarded messages from friends and family for the same reason.

And, perhaps, most alarmingly in terms of the potential for excruciating embarrassment, 14 per cent stored emails from partners to use against them one day.

Toni Smith, of Lycos UK, said: "We really have become a nation of hoarders when it comes to our emails.

"People should be careful what they say as it could come back to haunt them, whether from friends, colleagues or partners."

The dangers of hitting the send button at work have been highlighted by several high-profile cases in recent years.

Rachel Fountain, from Brighton, was sacked by American Express in 2002 for accidentally inviting a boss to a saucy party. The 22-year-old inadvertently sent the email to a finance director who shared a friend's name.

She had been featured on the Channel 4 show Sex Tips For Girls with her boyfriend Pascal Sharples.

To celebrate, they organised a "porn party" at their home in Queen's Gardens, Brighton.

Their invitation featured a picture of a Fifties pin-up and invited guests to come dressed as "porn stars, prossies, pimps, gimps, flashers, slutty schoolgirls and anything sleazy and cheesy".

But perhaps the most famous case was that of Jo Moore, a Department of Transport adviser, who emailed colleagues on September 11, 2001 - the day of the US terrorist attacks - saying it might be "a good day to bury bad news".

Then there was City worker Trevor Luxton, 22, who boasted to friends in an email of an intimate encounter with a friend's girlfriend.

His friends forwarded the email and Mr Luxton resigned following an inquiry by his bosses.