What Did You Tell Your Company That You Didn’t Want Them to Know?
Everyone knows it’s a Federal Offense to interfere with snail mail, the mail your postman stuffs in your mailbox. At least that’s some protection against someone else opening your mail without your knowledge. What are the issues when someone reads your email?
When it comes to email most people have what could be considered to be; "Business email" either your own business, or the company you work for,
and "Personal email", where you correspond with friends and family.
So let’s discuss Business email first. Most companies have a clause in their computer usage policies that goes something like this: "It is to be understood by the employee that all use of technology, whether electric or electronic remains the property of and is at the discretion the company. Where resources are allocated email accounts may be provided for business use only, are regulated by the company, and remain the property of the company…" or something to that effect. Loosely translated, this means that the company owns your email, your account, and it’s contents. They assign your account, they control the size of your email box, and they regulate its use, and probably own the server(s) it resides on.
There are of course some legitimate legal reasons for all of this. If an employee leaves they may well need critical information contained in the employees correspondence with other companies. If someone is suing the company they may even make it policy that all employees save every email since it may be needed in court.
This does however leave some "gray" areas. There is nothing really to prevent an HR Director or Manager, with enough clout, from going to the email administrator who controls all the companies’ email, and asking them to "audit" an employees email. This is commonly done in cases of harassment, suspected theft, or other possibly criminal activity. Just as you can set up an automatic "forward" or "responder" in your email, an email administrator can also automatically forward all your email to someone else, a "bcc or blind carbon copy". Although every technical department has not only its own ethical policies but also company policies to prevent abuse, it does happen.
This also applies to any personal email, whether through your company email address or a separate address. If it is on a company computer, the company has access to it.
Personal email at home is slightly different. Anyone who has watched any of the several Forensics programs on TV has probably seen at least one show where they have broken into a suspect’s computer and/or email looking for evidence. Generally this would require at least a search warrant. Outside of that, anyone else in the house with the ability to turn on your computer without having to use a password into your documents and email has access to all of it.
Let me offer a few suggestions:
First, unless you want your boss to know what a jerk you think he or she is, just to be on the safe side I wouldn’t personally email that information back and forth to your co-workers.
Second, make it a policy on any computers in your house to have email at least password protected unless you simply don’t mind if little Annie or Johnnie surfs through and gets a good look at the endless stream of spam and porno ads each of us gets from some list we’ve been erroneously added to.
Last but certainly not least, if you don’t plan on saying it to someone’s face you certainly shouldn’t be putting it in writing in an email. It can and will be used against you in a court of law… or at some point by your husband, wife, or boss.
Be safe.
DB