I don't understand why this is even remotely controversial. I am as jealous a guard of my personal privacy as anyone, but I would expect my employer to be able to monitor my work-related email. The resolution is simple: conduct your personal correspondence through a separate email account that is not owned by your employer.
In fact, I keep strictly segregated work and personal email, and I run my own company!
Ownership of the email address/account is important. If you're using a corporate account, communicating on behalf of your employer, and have been informed ahead of time that all emails from said account are monitored, I don't believe many people could reasonably argue an expectation of privacy for personal correspondence in such a setting.
Additionally, if you work for a company or industry where such correspondence must be preserved and tendered on request due to applicable laws or regulations, such organizations are legally required to have access to all employee emails.
I think that people dont realize that they shouldnt use work email for personal correspondence. Its even less private than a free email service like Gmail. In the late 90s/early 2000s I was an admin at a fortune 500 company and people would move to different geographic BUs often. When that happened, we had to migrate their email accounts. The practice at the time was to robocopy their home drive and export/import their exchange mailbox. We would then reset their password and validate things were in order. I would never outright read someones mail, but you would be surprised what was at the top of someones inbox in their work email.
Additionally, when robocopying their profile data you would see their internet history(each visited/cached site, cookies, etc). I couldnt believe the number of VP/C level employees that would have vast quantities of porn and shady history on their work machine. no judgement here, but if worker bees had the same content they would be fired without question.
Do what you want on your own time or computer, but dont expect a work PC to be private or not monitored.
My policy is never to reveal my work email to anyone other than coworkers and business partners. I have changed jobs before and it is always a mess to get rid of a job-related email accounts.
Oh please. People should know better than to use work email for personal stuff. This is a major corporation's work email. Not 'private correspondence.'
The whole idea that business email (and email in general) isn't already essentially public is a farce - the business itself has at will access to any employee's mails, and it can all be subpoena'd without warrant.
At best we should feel sorry for the employees not understanding this and treating their employer as a benevolent and trustworthy party.
If your email is from your company, you don't own it and there's no expectation of privacy as you're working as a representative of that company.
It's well established that what I do outside of work can get me fired if it's deemed inappropriately representing the company. So I don't get why there's an expectation of privacy when I'm doing something with work property, even if it's an email. I'll get fired if I'm inappropriately using the vehicle my work gives me, why wouldn't I get fired if I'm inappropriately using an email address my work gives me?
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