Should you read the private e-mail of your network users just " because you can?"?

Question

is it okay to read employee "e-mail as a security measure, to ensure that sensitive company information isn't being enclosed?"

Answer 1

It depends upon the laws of your state.  If you are reading personal e-mail without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, you may be guilty of a crime in some states.

A better solution would be to have the traffic scanned by a web filter or other technology for certain keywords that may indicate suspicious activity.  You can then use that criteria as justification for reviewing the specific messages flagged.

Answer 2

No unless you have a court order or permission to do so.

Answer 3

if there is a suspicion that there is someone giving out informantion. But they may have to have signed something before hand?

Answer 4

Anything done on company time with company equipment is company business and can be read/destroyed are dealt with as the company see's fit as long as it complies with the law.

All computer users of a company need to understand that anything and everything they type or say can be read and /or used against them.

Think about Enron.

Answer 5

You should not personally read them.

But you can install some firewall/filter kind of software which lets you detect if something fishy is going on.It may not be reliable,but works to some extent.

Note : If an employee wants to leak out information,he definitely can.No one can physically stop him.You should morally and ethically make the employees not do this.

After all they must have signed some document saying they eil not leak information.You can sue them...