What can work read?

woodmill

If I send an e-mail to a friend or family member from a personal e-mail account such as yahoo or hotmail or gmail but from a pc at work can work actually read the content of that e-mail? I know from their systems they can see what websites have been accessed but I am just not sure if they can see exactly what has been typed.

Can anyone help?

diable

Do you have anything to hide?

tanith

As I understand it your employer can and probably does monitor anything you send, look at or type..I think its considered their property if its sent on their equipment.. thats how I understand it anyway..

mickey54

tanith wrote: »

As I understand it your employer can and probably does monitor anything you send, look at or type..I think its considered their property if its sent on their equipment.. thats how I understand it anyway..

Normally it's only anything going through the company e mail address. Being logged onto a site is monitored, but they do not have the permission to read what you are writing.

OP - if in doubt - don't use work PC for anything that could come back and bite you on the bum.

Ximian

It is possible to view emails in transit since most freely available email accounts only support SSL (HTTPS) during the login phase, meaning the actual email and contents is not encrypted, Yahoo mail is an example. GMail (if you have enabled encryption) will encrypt the whole session and emails sent will be encrypted. Apart from that, the company could also be able to view your screen and capture anything you type. Tanith is right, the company owns the equipment, but I also believe that employees should receive fair warning about company equipment misuse and information privacy using company equipment.

Ximian

Link regarding workplace privacy (US based, may be applicable to UK law): http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs7-work.htm#3a

paddyrg

Ximian has hit it on the head, https encrypts the traffic end to end, otherwise it is readable in plain text (although not convenient to read, they would have to actively look for it in the general tsunami of data going in and out of the company every day)