Email privacy.

[Drafty]

Hello all, does anybody if it is legal for your boss to view all your ingoing and outgoing emails in the workplace be it either personal or proffesional. The reason is our boss has just put in place a system on our network so as he can view all emails and although we know about it we have not officially been told. If any anybody could enlighten me about it, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[OBonio]

He is within his rights.  If you've nothing to hide though, why would you be worried?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/14/bosses_gain_email_snooping_rights/

I concede though that it does stink of big brother...

[j2buttonsw]

I think your company owns your e-mails and can therefore read them. So keep your work e-mails professional

[Very]

Your boss is legally entitled to look at emails. But there should be info about this in your staff handbook / whatever telling you that, and whether they do it as standard practice or just whether they can of they want.

[BenDToy]

You are using your company's computer, their internet connection, and (possibly) sending emails during time which they are paying for. 'Nuff said I think.

[honkytonkman]

Best thing is to set up a free web mail account with 'hotmail' or 'yahoo' (or similar) for your personal email. He won't be able to see those as all the info is kept on Net - he could only access them if he knows your username and passord. That's the way I have it set up here at work, so all emails that are downloaded to my work account are strictly about work. I do think your boss is being unnecessarily severe over this matter... trust works both way!!

[ursula62]

Where are you based>? I think as the UK /EEC law stands, he HAS to tell you about this, BEFORE he implements the new system as it is a change in your working conditions. Of course, he is at liberty to dispense with your services if you refuse to accept a new contract or working conditions, but that's another issue.

There was a test case a few years ago about a UK office of a US company. The UK people successfully sued their employer for infringement of privacy or something like that as they had not been made aware of the US company's intention to scan/intercept all email messages.

 

[Drafty]

Thanks for your responses everyone. To make things clear though I do have a personal email address and certainly have nothing to hide concerning emails at work and do not send or recieve personal emails from my work computer, we were just having a friday debate about it. Cheers.

[slimfandango]

Using a web based service like Hotmail does offer you a bit better protection, since the emails are not stored on the server at work, but he can screen-scrape (take image dumps of what you are looking at), or use a key-logger to see what you wrote. If it's personal I wouldn't type it at work.