Personal email monitoring at work?

[Herman]

Hi all, I'm having a bit of a paranoid/anxious moment here, hope that you can help. I just sent a personal email on my work computer, and I was wondering if anybody knew whether they can track emails or keystrokes on a work computer? I really don't want them to know what I have said on there.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi Herman,

If you are talking a company using exchange servers then my experience is that a copy is kept. However, no one is going to see it unless there is a reason to be monitoring your email or they later take some action to get your IT people to provide anything still stored (only archived for so long). Such an action takes place if a manager suspects an employer of abusing email.

As a one off its really unlikely anything will ever be seen.

I take it there was no swearing in it? Those may be picked up by filters but it depends what they would be looking for as I've found even this can be ropey.

Keystrokes, whilst possible, are very unlikely, certainly for an email anyway. Transactions tend to be logged bit recording keystrokes would be a waste of sever space as it's extremely unlikely they would ever need it. You would be talking about high security workplaces there.

[Davit]

Some companies do monitor addresses and will know you used the computer but without a password they can't read unless you did it with the company login. If they are paying for your time they may well feel you should not be using their time, others don't care what you do on coffee break. I take it you might have said something they might not like.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Some companies do monitor addresses and will know you used the computer but without a password they can't read unless you did it with the company login. If they are paying for your time they may well feel you should not be using their time, others don't care what you do on coffee break. I take it you might have said something they might not like.

If the staff computers are on a network, email will pass via an email server which also deals with in/our virus & security protection. So, it can be stored on the server.

As a rule, email at work should never be used for personal use without permission, however its such a minor thing that warrants no more than a brief 'don't do it again, please'. If someone if doing it a lot, they may request copies of emails over time and add up all the time spent on it or they may even ask to be attached so they can get a copy of all mails to/from that person's email. This needs enough suspicion to get a more senior manager to authorise it usually as IT depts are well aware of the Data Protection Act.

Some industries are different though e.g. defence companies or central government offices. In these rules are likely to be far stricter but you would have been briefed on that when you joined them.

[Herman]

Thanks for the response guys, I really appreciate it.

For the record, it was from a personal gmail account over a https connection, so not overly concerned now, but thank you for the wise words.

[MyNameIsTerry]

They can't see those, Herman. You can use a keystoke logger to do it but it would be a data protection issue because despite it being a works computer, they would be accessing your email on a remote server in doing it (technically) so they could be in hot water with your email provider.

They won't know anything, only a record of the website IP address to say you were on it.