Personal emails from work

[Faithless]

Oh, the predicament.

You spend a lot of time at work, so it only seems natural to use the work email system to keep up with family.

Should you, though?

Brits send emails from home (http://www.web-user.co.uk/news/news.php?id=47774)
Internet users in the UK prefer to send personal emails from home rather than at work, a new report has found.

Sixty-three per cent of Brits say they avoid sending personal emails from their workplace, according to the survey conducted for Amstrad's e-m@iler digital telephone.

The study reports that almost two-fifths (38 per cent) of employers admit to regularly monitoring their employee’s email.

Not surprisingly, the study found that 63 per cent of the nation avoid sending emails relating to a new job from their work email, while 17 per cent refrain from sending sexually explicit material or porn-related emails.

Eight per cent of Brits never send emails relating to holidays or new properties from their office, while two per cent avoid sending emails relating to personal banking and finance.

Simon Sugar, commercial director at Amstrad, said: “The results of the Amstrad e-m@iler report come as no surprise, we have seen first-hand the increased popularity of emailing from home. Sales of the e-m@iler in the last six months have rocketed.”

[kasia]

why would anyone in his right mind send porn through his work email???

i use my yahoo account for personal emails and my work account for only business-related stuff.

[Faithless]

why would anyone in his right mind send porn through his work email???

i use my yahoo account for personal emails and my work account for only business-related stuff.
Yeah, the porn stuff is dumb idea.

And I guess I could keep my yahoo account up all the time.

Hasn't been too much of a problem so far, here, though.

We are lucky enough to have our organization allow the union-related stuff go through the work email.

[FrankieY18]

my company blocked hotmail so i can only send emails (personal and business) from my work email

[Faithless]

my company blocked hotmail so i can only send emails (personal and business) from my work email
That's sort of scary.

Does it make you wonder whether they are monitoring it?

[kasia]

you know what's really scary?

once, at work, i was reading something on the screen when the mouse started moving on its own. it went to files, open, and browsed for a file. about a minute later, our tech person called and said that he didn't know i was on the computer and was accessing my computer using his remote control!

they can see *everything* we do.

moral of the story? don't fight with your significant other on IM while at work.

[Faithless]

That is scary and there are at least a couple of products we use here to "control" workers' desktops:

* Win VNC, and
* Windows Terminal Services.

We usually announce when we're going to do it and it is usually in relation to a support issue or an install. Never for snooping to my knowledge.

[kasia]

hahahaha. we probably also think it's scary b/c we spend so much time in YW while at work.

can the YW tech ppl please inform us just how much access our companies might have to our personal emails? is everything logged?

[Craig]

hahahaha. we probably also think it's scary b/c we spend so much time in YW while at work.

can the YW tech ppl please inform us just how much access our companies might have to our personal emails? is everything logged?Depends on how anal the company is ?

I think many companies may have software that records every keystroke (which doesn't take much memory). It's possible they are also running some application storing everything that goes through the network (or at least the proxy server to the Internet) somewhere else. They probably only save that stuff for a few days at most. However, I would suspect most companies will not store everything you see on the Internet, but just maybe what sites you visit and maybe when and how long you are there.

At my company, we aren't allowed to access personal emails, only our corporate account. I started a new email account with something like "hongkongmail.com" and about 3 days later the site was blocked as being a violation of company policy.

I suspect many companies archive and save corporate emails that have been deleted.

[Faithless]

The networking gurus can check me on this, but as far as I know, web addresses can be cached but particular web pages (like the email you just sent through yahoo) cannot.

[Emperor_Mike]

Check your company security/computer/internet usage policy for details on user privacy. There may be legal issues involved that you may wish to be aware of in the event you do something that you don't want your employers to know about or see.

[noname]

In addition to the productivity issue, there's also supposedly the threat of viruses being spread through the company network via use of web-based email, or more specifically, attachments downloded through such means.
At least that's the reason given at my company for not allowing (albeit by honor system so far) web-based email or IM to be used.
If what you do affects other people (and/or the company's ability to do business) like that, then that's a problem.

[Faithless]

In addition to the productivity issue, there's also supposedly the threat of viruses being spread through the company network via use of web-based email, or more specifically, attachments downloded through such means.
At least that's the reason given at my company for not allowing (albeit by honor system so far) web-based email or IM to be used.
If what you do affects other people (and/or the company's ability to do business) like that, then that's a problem.
Not just web based email, but email with some sort of URL that leads to a virus download.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

My company just started blocking all webmail accounts as of this monday. We were all pretty surprised when they announced it last week. They're also screwed up our internal chat program.

I have the habit of reading the google cached version of most pages, mainly cuz it's faster, but also cuz it avoids accesses to other sites. dunno if it actually helps hide any of my online activities from the tech support or corporate compliance guys, though.

[dorkus malorkus]

I use my personal email through the city's computer at work. ooo...better keep my eyes open for that! hee....

[kasia]

whatever you do, don't pull a peter chung.

Peter Chung was all set for his new life as an investment banker at The Carlyle Group's Seoul branch. A week after his arrival he used company email to write to all his colleagues, boasting about his new lavish lifestyle. 'I know I was a stud in NYC but I pretty much get about, on average, 5-8 phone numbers a night and at least 3 hot chicks that say that they want to go home with me every night I go out, 'he wrote, among other things. He was fired shortly afterwards.

[yoMAMA]

whatever you do, don't pull a peter chung.

what a dumbass!

[Faithless]

what a dumbass!
Yeah. Hope it was worth it.

Nothing like playing the stud, but really being a dud.

[Faithless]

So, we're having a nice family discussion about Thanksgiving for next year.

And it is getting a little heated.

I realized, and passed-on, that my wife's cousin, who is close, is using his work email to continue the debate.

People are replying to him and the exchange is getting too heated.

I told him that he should use his personal email account, but he still continues to use his work account.

What's a family member to do? :rolleyes:

[LaiSteve66]

I work at the University where I attend school and we use our school email accounts so we can send anything we want. Our email clients support personal email addresses (hotmail/aol/etc) and I usually use those accounts for personal email.

[luv]

you know whats scary... there used to be a tech guy at work who hit on every female under the age 35 in our department. on his last day of work (he was laid off), he comes over to my desk and asks me "say hi to dorothy" for him. i thought she was one of his failed attempts, but passed on the message anyways. turns out she didn't know him and the only reason he knew of a "dorothy" was because he tracked all of my inter-office IM pop-ups. how did i find this out? he sent me an email asking me out a week after his last day admitting he's been reading my shit at work.

[Faithless]

you know whats scary... there used to be a tech guy at work who hit on every female under the age 35 in our department. on his last day of work (he was laid off), he comes over to my desk and asks me "say hi to dorothy" for him. i thought she was one of his failed attempts, but passed on the message anyways. turns out she didn't know him and the only reason he knew of a "dorothy" was because he tracked all of my inter-office IM pop-ups. how did i find this out? he sent me an email asking me out a week after his last day admitting he's been reading my shit at work.
I guess that clears that up, about IM at work.

There are people that I know that are heavily into it at work.

[luv]

yes, its best to be careful about what you send. about 2 months ago, 4 people got fired for forwarding a xxx pic to each other. i don't think the manager was viewing their email, but someone walked by and reported them, then they looked up the history and fired the people that received (and also forwarded) the email. maybe my bank is just paranoid....now i'm scared to death of getting pictures in my email.

although there is speculation of other reasons they were fired...3 of the 4 people have been working there 10+ years and there was word the department was to shrink staff through attrition -- just found a way to avoid paying those pensions, i guess.:frown:

[Banana]

I keep reading about everyone wondering about what is and isn't monitored and coming from me, a network admin for a billion dollar international firm, we pretty much have full access to everything on your hard drive and what you're currently seeing. And like Kasia stated, we can control your keyboard and mouse as well.

In according to compliance rules, we're technically allowed to just log into someone's machine and look at whatever we want unless we have a specific reason to.

[tommyhtown]

I use my personal laptop for my current consulting assignment. I IM my friends and coworker on work-related issues and anything else, and use my personal email account since the client didn't give me one. I try to be careful with what I do, and I say online - email, IM, or surfing. Heck, I don't even click on sex&health thread when I am at work.

[Faithless]

...
In according to compliance rules, we're technically allowed to just log into someone's machine and look at whatever we want unless we have a specific reason to.
"Technically NOT allowed" or "technically allowed"?

For the most part, a user wouldn't know this unless their mouse control went bonkers.

It's sort of awkward to work with a user's desktop, because I'm hoping not to find obviously suspect stuff.

[Banana]

Yea. I meant "technically NOT allowed."

The most obvious thing is if I log into your workstation and start playing around with the mouse but I can view and access your files as well as scan your mailbox on our exchange servers. All of this is completely within the firm's rights.

And to credit fear, if anyone dares to raise a stink, we can toss out some general terms such as "compliance, policy, and network security" to quell any type of complaint. Honestly though, we seriously don't do any of that junk unless compliance actually called for us to eavesdrop on an employee. We rather waste our time playing online flash games.

If it wasn't a violation, I'd post some great screenshots that I've taken of what I've found on some users' machines.