Slashdot Mirror
Conspiring Against Your Employer? Watch What You Email
Eric Giguere writes "In a story that has Bay Street (the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street) in a kerfuffle, the Globe and Mail writes that bank employees defecting to set up a rival investment firm didn't realize that their employer could easily track the emails and messages they sent and received, even when they're sent via a nominally-secure system like RIM's BlackBerry. In particular, the employees were assuming that the messages they sent via direct PIN-to-PIN communication (a PIN uniquely identifies a BlackBerry device) weren't trackable. But if they're on the device, they're available to the employer to see. The employees may also have thought that PIN-to-PIN messages are encrypted, though RIM has always said that they're not -- it's only the connection to the corporate email server that is secure. A lot of damning information pulled from those emails and messages has made its way into a lawsuit."
Unfortunately, the employers are just as, if not more than, guilty of betraying loyalty. Employees put in 80 hours per week for months on end, "because the company is hurting". Then at the end of the year, the executives take bonuses and fire large portions of the staff.
it's my network, it's my email, i am protected, noone else is.