This has been a debate among policy writers since personal e-mail started to become popular: Can your company monitor/sniff/access your personal e-mail?

Up until this week, it was commonly accepted that you didn’t use company resources to access/read/write your personal e-mail if you didn’t want it to be monitored. However, that seems to have changed – in one specific case. In New Jersey, a woman used her company laptop to exchange information with her lawyer over a web-based e-mail over an issue at work that later went to court. The company used her e-mail communications (presumably) cached on the laptop as evidence against her in court.

While this is (so far) the first case I’ve heard of like this, it doesn’t mean that all employees have personal e-mail privacy all the time. The first thing is that this was in NJ state supreme court, which only applies in that state – however, the case is likely to influence other courts. The second is that the e-mail was considered client-attorney communications – which are “sacred” in most cases. A defendant could tell his lawyer that he did murder someone and the lawyer can not disclose it except under very specific circumstances. Finally, the e-mail was “reasonably” protected – she used a web based service and did not store the password on the laptop.

While it seems to be a blow to companies’ abilities to monitor employee communications, it only applies in specific cases. Either way, as an employee, it’s a better idea to keep your personal e-mail/life separate from your work life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 6:00 am by Laura Raderman and is filed under privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.