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Employee Beware: Do NOT Send Private Emails from Your Work Mail Account!

Jan 19, 2011 | Injury Law

It seems like no-brainer. Do NOT send emails you wouldn’t want your employer to read FROM YOUR WORK EMAIL ACCOUNT!

Yet I hear about people continuing to make this same mistake. I thought I’d better offer a gentle reminder:  DO NOT ASSUME ANYTHING ON YOUR WORK COMPUTER OR WORK EMAIL IS PRIVATE!

What sparked my intent to visit this topic was a recent California appellate court decision. The court ruled that even attorney-client confidentiality doesn’t apply when the email is on company servers.

This story was sent to me via Google Reader, in the LifeHacker.com post Your Employer Can Read Your Work Emails, Even to Your Lawyer [Privacy] by Kevin Purdy.

Kevin reported on a recent Wired magazine story – in a 3-0 decision, the Sacramento-based court ruled that a woman sending an email to her attorney, in a matter regarding plans to sue your employer, from your office was akin to “consulting her lawyer in her employer’s conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open, so that any reasonable person would expect that their discussion of her complaints about her employer would be overheard.”

Here’s a link to a PDF of the court’s decision on email privacy at work.

There is a loophole, but as far as I am concerned it’s risky. Wired reports that a New Jersey court found emails sent from a personal, web-based account, like Gmail, were private and confidential, due in part to the warnings and disclaimers on an attorney’s email signatures.

But passwords, notes, photos, etc., that you store on your work network, or work computer, are essentially stored in company property. Your employer was probably pretty careful to let you know that you shouldn’t violate company policies via the company equipment, and you shouldn’t have an expectation of privacy for what you put on the computer at work.

Think about it this way – what if you won a month-long cruise that you had to take right away. Your boss said you could have the time off – but in order to take care of your work, he would be going through every single file and e-mail message on your computer.Would you need a little time to set things straight?

I think even great, honest employees sometimes treat work computers more like home computers. I’m just here to remind you that you shouldn’t!

Thanks for reading,

Jim

_________________________________
James B. Reed
NY & PA Injury & Malpractice Lawyer
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
Mailto: jreed@zifflaw.com
Office: (607)733-8866
Toll-Free: 800-ZIFFLAW (943-3529)
Web: www.zifflaw.com
Blogs: NYInjuryLawBlog.com and
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Your Employer Can Read Your Work Emails, Even to Your Lawyer [Privacy]

There are many, many reasons not to use your work email address for anything remotely personal. Here’s one more: a California appellate court has ruled that even attorney-client confidentiality doesn’t apply when the email is on company servers.

Photo by Stephen Edgar – Netweb.
In a 3-0 decision, the Sacramento-based court ruled that a woman sending an email to her attorney, in a matter regarding plans to sue your employer, from your office was akin to “consulting her lawyer in her employer’s conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open, so that any reasonable person would expect that their discussion of her complaints about her employer would be overheard.” (Google Docs PDF link to decision).
As Wired writes, a New Jersey court had previously found that emails sent from a personal, web-based account, like Gmail, were private and confidential, due in part to the warnings and disclaimers on an attorney’s email signatures (so, you see, they have their place). But if you’re considering a jump from your job, or even further action, consider yourself warned.

Work E-Mail Not Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege, Court Says [Threat Level | Wired.com]

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