Large companies paying workers to read employee e-mail

If you were thinking of using your work e-mail for job hunting or online dating, think twice.

A new survey finds that 41 percent of large companies (those with 20,000 or more employees) are paying staffers to read or otherwise analyze the contents of employees' outbound e-mail.

In the study, which was commissioned by e-mail security provider Proofpoint and conducted by Forrester Research, 44 percent of the companies surveyed said they investigated an e-mail leak of confidential data in the past year and 26 percent said they fired an employee for violating e-mail policies, according to security portal Help Net Security.

The companies also said they are worried about employees leaking company information on their blogs, message boards, and media-sharing sites like YouTube.

Eleven percent of the U.S. companies surveyed took disciplinary action against employees for improper use of blogs or message boards in the past year, and slightly more than that disciplined workers for social-network violations and for improper use of media-sharing sites.

And 14 percent of publicly traded companies investigated the leakage of material financial information, such as unannounced financial results, on blogs and message boards.

[rcrusoe]

When are people going to learn that email is never private? It can be read by administrators of every server that handles it as well as anyone with some technical savvy that's on one of the network segments that carries your message. If you need to do personal emailing at work use webmail from a company like Google that allows you to connect via SSL (https). Your boss will still know you're using email but he can read what your saying about him. ;)

[steve8411]

As an employer of a small business, it's a necessary waste of my time to keep an eye on what my employees are doing. I had an instance where one employee sent over 100 emails a day to converse with her boyfriend. She was also the first to complain she didn't have enough time to get her work done.

SHOCKER.

[Melekai]

I think I dated her!

[George Orwellian]

Oh, bad news, rcrusoe. Gmail HTTPS and SSL in general can be broken at the firewall (or Internet on-ramp).

Check out these white papers:

http://userland.info/stuff/SSL-Scanning-01.pdf
http://userland.info/stuff/SSL-Scanning-02.pdf

As for email monitoring, I spend several years doing it on Wall Street.

If you'd like to read my real story of being in the Information Security department of Salomon Brothers (old name) trying to secure the Internet connection (required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act) pull up:

http://orwellian.org/docs/Cryptography_Manifesto.txt

...and twice (second occurrence) do a find-on-page for:

On Monitoring and Being Monitored

It was a harrowing experience.

--
Harvey Mars

[treet007]

At work, you have no guarantee of privacy, period. If you want to do your own personal e-mails or online dating, bring your own laptop with your own broadband service (outside of the work's computer network) and use your laptop during your lunch time and break periods.

Anyone who thinks they can do their personal business at work is in for a shocking revelation -- no, in general, you cannot. Some employers allow some personal time, and you are allowed to use the business phone and computers sparingly. But again, you have no guarantee of personal privacy.

[ev61]

Work etiquette 101: Don't use company time/money/equipment for personal use.

[captkeebz]

Obviously we can't have workers spending all day chatting with friends and surfing the web. However, I think that many companies have shirked the responsibility of explicitly informing their employees that the monitoring is happening. Additionally, it is important for management to realize that you cannot stifle employee opinions so easily. If they crack down too hard, or unfairly, the backlash will surely be unleashed once the employee gets to his/her home computer. I've worked in a couple of militaristic cubicle farms and have to say that these places tend to have active 'resistance movements' going on inside of them, definitely affecting the business. Employees will always have opportunity to vandalize/sabotage at some point during their work day if they feel disgruntled.

[benjaminstraight]

It should be private. Regardless of where it is written.

[melekai12]

FREE CONTEST GOTO: http://www.famecast.com/response.php?to_fan_id=324285&event_id=1800450&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.famecast.com%2Fcontest%2Fstage.php%3Fsid%3D1%26rid%3D1032%26aid%3D21038%26vid%3D19591