CNN/Reuters: Study: Companies snooping on employee e-mail

Study: Companies snooping on employee e-mail
Monday, June 5, 2006

....According to a new study, about a third of big companies in the United States and Britain hire employees to read and analyze outbound e-mail as they seek to guard against legal, financial or regulatory risk.

More than a third of U.S. companies surveyed also said their business was hurt by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information in the past 12 months, according to the annual study from a company specializing in protecting corporate e-mail at large businesses.

"What folks are concerned about is confidential or sensitive information that is going out," said Gary Steele, chief executive of Cupertino, California-based Proofpoint Inc., which conducted the study along with Forrester Research.

The top concern was protecting the financial privacy and identity of customers followed by compliance issues and a bid to prevent confidential leaks. Businesses ranked monitoring for inappropriate content and attachments as less important.

Steele also said on Friday that more and more companies are employing staff to read outgoing e-mails of workers who typically have no idea their correspondence is being monitored....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/06/05/email.snooping.reut/index.html

so long as the employees are warned ahead of time about this. I mean, if I allowed my neighbor to use my email address, I'd damn well want to know what's being written in my name.

It is becoming a necessity...

After all its their property, if any employee wants to send emails that is not work related or surf the Internet he/she is free to do it on his/her own equipment at home.

And everybody is aware of it. Not officially aware. But aware. So ... if I'm going to talk treason I use my personal account. :P :shrug:

Assume anything you send from your company email or company computer is not private.

People think it is "their" desk and "their" PC....

Computer network admins can look at everything on your PC and every website you ever visit at work, if they so choose or are ordered to.

They have been able to do that since computers were first networked. This aint exactly a news flash.

yet we are just waking-up to it now....

We have each employee sign computer usage agreements, so that they know that their information is not private when sent through company property.

However, as the admin of over 300 users, we don't read or open anyone's mail unless it is a specific need, such as a supervisor needing info from a sick employees email, or suspected and documented wrong doing. Good lord, who has the time to read people's email, I barely have time to read my own some days.

I have no problem with my company getting into my email. A lot of nasty viruses are sent through email, we have had one employee open an email that took down our network.