Is work reading your emails?

Gmail
Forwarding to external email accounts could land you in hot water too

A US company had a look at how companies monitor email output, and they found not only are you often being watched, but companies are paying someone to do it.

In fairness, it is generally the larger enterprises that are partaking in this monitoring frenzy. They are worried about the potential for sensitive information leaking out, but that will also include the embarrassing emails you send to you partner.

According to the study by pinpoint, 41 per cent of the companies employed someone to look through emails or analyse the content to make sure nobody is exposing the business. Worryingly, 22 per cent employ someone exclusively to do this, so companies are taking the threat seriously.

Video killed the security star

The study said other outlets are threats to the safety of information, such as blogs, message boards or even video-sharing sites like YouTube. Though, if someone is posting videos that could compromise company information, then you’d probably be doing it on purpose.

Most people know that they are afforded very little privacy at work, and take note when using the internet or email for work. But for those who don’t, they should remember inappropriate emails will be flagged up quickly and they could even potentially be fired under the company’s Internet Usage Policy.

Basically, if you work in a big company, think twice about forwarding that ‘hilarious’ video of your mate’s stag weekend.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.