How closely do companies monitor employees emails/ IT use?

[chelseafan123]

Just read something that scared me a bit and made me slightly paranoid (perhaps rightly so?) At work last week the boss was really getting on my nerves. As well as my work email I have my personal account open as do the majority of people in my workplace and I'll occasionally send a personal email.

I sent a horribly scathing email venting about my boss to my friend who works elsewhere, we often exchange silly chat like that and I was saying awful things ableit lighthearted it intended for my friends eyes only.

I did text my friend later saying the boss had actually been ok that afternoon and I felt guilty about saying what I had said.

Is it possible for my company to know I sent that email? It was on a hotmail account that I logged out of at the end of the day. Could they remotely monitor my computer or just my work email account?

It's unlikely that anyone is checking your emails on a day to day basis. However, as others have said they have the RIGHT to do so, so if I were you I wouldn't do this again. And delete the message from your outbox (I'm sure it would still be recoverable by work, but you may as well make it harder!)

What roasted said

A person won't be looking at everything you do
but, if you are pulled up on something in the future, they may go back over your record/screen shots at that point

Oh wait, sorry, I just realised that you sent it from a personal home email account....

I think that it's super unlikely that this email will ever see the light of day!

I think that if they pay a specialist vast amounts of money then they can recover anything at all that has appeared on your computer screen. But this is very difficult and in practice rarely happens unless people are trying to check if a computer has been used for images of child abuse or something...

I've never heard of screenshots being saved locally - that would be a huge amount of data and hugely expensive. And obviously they don't have access to your private email.

I think you're safe!

"Reasonable personal use" does not include trashing your boss via email, especially if it went out of company.

You are probably fine but learn from this situation: don't send personal emails on company time; don't use company equipment for hotmail or web surfing.

They're unlikely to stumble across it but if they ever decided to investigate you for any reason they'd be entitled to look back through all your emails.

As someone who accidentally sent an email slagging off the boss to the boss I am now super careful about personal stuff

Not a good idea. Not even a good idea to use work wifi on your phone as it too can be monitored.

Just chill out

NOBODY will read this email. Do not tell anyone at work.

Chill. Nobody has time to read all the employee's emails sent, even IT people. IT people would rather browse their facebook.

Just asked my husband, he's a system admin. He says they wouldn't be able to see an email sent through your personal email account, especially if the website starts with https as it's fully encrypted. They could see that you've accessed hotmail but not the content...unless their is screen capturing software installed. Even if there was, highly unlikely anyone would ever see it (unless you were being investigated for something) as no one trawls through the vast quantities of data collected without good reason.

Companies have the right to monitor virtually anything...
but... it must be against agreed policies / contracts etc. - so you should be aware (assuming you read such policies!) of what will be monitored.

Depending on the company the level of monitoring will vary:

• owner run, < 20-50 staff, probably no monitoring
• big enough to have IT / HR - maybe some random monitoring, or when an issue is suspected
• large business - will almost definitely use software and hardware tools to monitor virtually everything that moves across their network... It is extremely common for employees to make mistakes and send company data out of the company - potentially a huge risk to the company, so monitoring is big business...

depending on your contract you may be allowed to have some personal use - but the best approach is mobile phone on 3G / 4G and then unless you work for GCHQ / MI5 you will probably not be monitored... though work anywhere else and they are probably monitoring you anyway!

Our company monitors everything! Email, internet usage and all phone calls are recorded. We are in the financial services sector so usually it's just in case something happens.

However I know for a fact that weekly reports are produced which shows who is doing what . No one believes me but I've seen them so I rarely do anything personal just in case it comes back to haunt me.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/basic-rights-and-contracts/monitoring-at-work/

Op, chill out. At most they can tell you've logged on to hotmail or whatever.

Just don't do it again as it's causing you way too much stress.

Monkey

Thank you (and your DH) so much! Thanks to everyone else also including Trinity for slapping me out of it.

My partner always says I'm neurotic and I know I am, I'm getting worse.

Lots of inaccurate information on this thread!

They will be able to see you were on the hotmail website and how long for. They will not be able to read your personal messages sent through hotmail, unless they are screen sharing on your system (which they are very, very unlikely to be doing without your awareness).

I think a lot of people on the thread have misread and thought that you sent the email from your work email account.

Reasonable personal use if usually ok as long as its not offensive to anyone. Slagging your boss off in an email using company equipment would be considered offensive and if caught gross misconduct.

But it is highly unlikely they would read it.

I would never put anything like that in writing to anyone, even friends. I have, more than once, seen people writing down their thoughts about people and inadvertently sending it to them! It didn't end well.

OP my general rule at work is not to send anything to anyone that my boss couldn't read. You are very probably safe but if I were you, I wouldn't do it again! As pp have said, monitoring aside, there's too much room for an unfortunate slip up.

I pissed off someone in IT at work (fixed something he couldn't fix, never a good idea*). Oddly, shortly afterwards, the IT department found a way to monitor absolutely everything on my PC. I'm very, very wary and just feel safer if I keep work and personal IT use completely separate.

• My IT isn't that good. It was a simple fix, he was looking for something much more difficult

Bigger companies tend to monitor time on external sites in comparison to internal ones, and also will log access attempts to specific restricted sites. Most proxies will ban the stuff they absolutely don't want you to access like porn etc. IT helpdesks for big companies have neither the time nor resources to monitor/report everybody with a fine toothcomb so will just monitor the worst 5-10% of the offenders.

We recently did a full forensic examination of a leaving employees devices.

They were able to recover everything, even his personal stuff from his personal Yahoo account. However, this cost thousands so it's not going to happen as routine. Only if they think you've been doing something serious enough to warrant the cost.

Interestingly the company said they couldn't recover stuff from gmail accounts - the rest (yahoo, hotmail etc) they could but not gmail. You might want to use a gmail account if you are going to make a habit of slagging your boss off over email (and change you passwords frequently)

They could quite conceivably have a keystroke logger. My work do.

It's unlikely they'll even know you were on hotmail at that time unless there's some sort of other reason for them to be investigating your internet usage. And even then, I don't know whether it's easy for an IT department to routinely record
details of every e-mail sent on an external internet e-mail site.

But I wouldn't send any e-mails like that using work PCs again. My last employer had an internet policy that allowed reasonable personal use - I'd basically interpret that as, if you wouldn't be happy looking at website xyz with your manager looking over your shoulder, don't look at it on the work PC. Either use a smartphone - not on company wifi - or wait till you've left work for the day.

I believe some large companies keep ALL emails for 7 years

So if there is any dispute the emails can be retrieved

Most large companies also have an IT Security department

Gmail tend to strip their headers, ie don't include originating IP in the info.

The netnanny I've come into contact with actually stopped anyone reaching links they didn't approve, facebook, betting, porn I can understand but included some medical sites, not ideal if you trying to compare lab results

1. Don't panic. Most employers don't have time.
2. There is guidance issued by the Information Commissioner for employers on accessing employees' emails. It suggests in most cases reading their hotmails etc is intrusive although it is lawful to ban employees from sending personal emails at work.
3. I agree it would be hard to access to hotmails anyway although there may be CCTV by your desk which records your screen of course or I supose key logging software on your PC.
4. When someone leaves, particularly someone senior, it is very common to check their emails from their work email to their hotmail in the month before they go as a lot of rather silly employees send employer details, secret information, customer lists, knowhow to their hotmail and get caught out.
5. Your employment contract may prohibit you from disclosing anything related to work and anyway it could be breach of confidence and also breach employer rules anonymously to blog about how you don't like your boss so check that side too. One lady i think wrote about Virgin airways staff spitting into air line clients' dinners and Virgin did not take too kindly to that getting out. She got the sack obviously.

I wonder If Virgin do spit in the clients' dinners?

catgirl so basically your company broke the law by hacking into his personal email accounts..?