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?

Not if they use screen capture or key logger technology Xfactor. Also it depends on what contract the colleague signed.

My contract basically says "if I'm stupid enough to be using your equipment - fill your boots"

I work for local government and our IT policy on private usage says that we can use the pcs for private use in our lunchbreaks. There's nothing to say we can't check our private email accounts, I do that occasionally as my supposedly "smart" phone doesn't let me.

We do have Web sensing technology which doesn't allow us to access sites with sexual content, gambling etc. I've been picked up on that a couple of times for no obvious reason when trying to access perfectly innocent sites (eg when I tried to access dc's school website to chck exam timetable ). .

I've never tried accessing eBay whilst at work but I know other people do because we're an open plan office and you csn see what other people are doing,.

The xfactor it depends on what is in the IT policy.

We have sites that if we access them means instant dismissal, for example. And there are key loggers on all machines. And basically, as a PP said, if I access from a work machine or via work wifi fill your boots

Indeed. The law is that if people are told the emails may be looked at then it is more fool them if they send emails they do not want read at work.

In general it is much better to criticise your boss whilst chatting to a friend at lunch time than committing it to writing in an email which makes it easier to be picked up. However even the chat face to face if it discloses confidential information might get you the sack and rightly so in some contexts depending on what you say.

(On Virgin airlines I cannot find the spitting into dinners case so perhaps I remembered that wrongly. 13 were sacked for blogging about things like allegedly cockroaches on the planes... www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/virgin-atlantic-sacks-13-staff-for-calling-its-flyers-chavs-982192.html )

This is a private email and unlikely however that the boss will even bother to try to get into it. I would not worry but in future best just to sound off face to face to someone.

Your company should have an IT and Communication Policy somewhere which will specific exactly what they can do and the circumstances for action. Much depends on IT security (both network risk and data loss risk). For example I have worked in an environment where you couldn't use personal email accounts, all USB ports were disabled and printer use was monitored as there was a massive risk of data loss. I've also been in places where all machines were screenshotted very 10 seconds as it was a trading environment that used on line talk tools so they needed proof of trade terms in a dispute.

To be honest, I always assume that anything I do at work can be recovered and questioned, so I stay off personal stuff.

At dh's company your email could quite easily be picked up and read. It's in the contracts anything that happens on the companies devices is not private and can and will be looked at. It screen shots, key logs, and it's also set up to flag inappropriate words to highlight to the IT managers for them to look into and people have been fired. It's not a big company but they take their tech policy very seriously.

TheXfactor

Yes. They are about as unethical as it gets and don't give two hoots

In fairness they thought the employee had stolen confidential information so they would possibly be covered.

I am still confused. If I use an internet browser on my work PC to log into my personal email account. I then log out, clear the cache and cookies etc. How could then log back in to my account?

With difficulty.

They could use a key logger to record what you typed or they could send your PC to a lab to be forensically examined.

The first one is unlikely as that level of monitoring is very heavy handed and resource heavy so unless they thought you were up to something serious..

The second one is very expensive. Think it costs us about £3k

But dont forget all the information is passing through their server so your web history etc is pretty visible (though not the content of your personal emails without something like the above)

I gave a data protection course once and a law firm managing partner was on it who apparently had delivered to him every morning a list of which web sites employees had been on the day before.... what a waste of time and how intrusive.... I don't think many people bother with that but I suppose if it's miltary secrets or you just think people are spending hours a day playing games on line or watching porn it is worth checking.