One-Third Of Companies Monitoring Email

dotpavan writes "While studies have shown that spying on workers tends to make them less productive, that hasn't stopped approximately 1/3 of all U.S. companies from employing email monitoring tools. 43% of those companies employ staff to check outgoing emails. This seems like quite a waste. While there are some times when it makes sense to monitor emails (or it's required by law), most of the time, this seems like a complete waste of money. Not only are you upsetting workers and decreasing productivity, the benefits are pretty hard to spot. The number of "problem" emails tends to be incredibly low. If someone really wants to send out inappropriate emails, they're going to figure out some other way to do so, such as via a free webmail account somewhere. Yet, the companies are buying up expensive tools and hiring staff to watch just in case they catch the one or two problematic emails that go over the corporate network."

Comments

A waste?

[dhakbar]

You wouldn't consider hiring folks to monitor e-mail if your firm suffered public embarrassment or lost business due to leaked information. While I agree that it is sad that employers don't feel that they can trust their employees, I honestly cannot blame them.

Re:A waste?

[kfg]

This isn't about leaked information. Anyone who wishes to leak information has multiple avenues to do so quite easily, given that they have access to the information in the first place.

Their own brains being the most obvious means. Notebooks and copy machines being others.

No, this is primarily about "hostile work environment" and sexual harrassment lawsuits and such like, with a healty dose of rigid heirarchical control syndrome (formerly known as Overseers Disease, formerly known as "Asshole Boss") thrown in for good measure.

KFG

Telephone versus Email

[Henry V .009]

What I find interesting is the distinction between email and phone use. It's illegal in many states -- may even be federal law for all I know -- to listen in on employee phone communication. Why doesn't email deserve this same protection?

Re:Automatic or manual?

[Criffer]

As if sucking is a swear word. Hell, I suck lollipops all the time!

And what about the word 'hell'. Well, coming from a Christian activism group, that's a valid word. Or chicken farmers talking about cocks. What's next? People called Richard being unable to use their abbreviated name? One Linux distro forum site censors the word "documentation" as "do***mentation".

Censorship is stupid. Automatic censorship more so.

liability issues

[dspacemonkey]

When your company is liable for the one or two problematic emails to the tune of millions of pounds, it starts to seem slightly less silly.

Re:Waste of time?

[Meshach]

I don't really care about what "makes sense" from a company's point of view, when the result is a restriction of my free speech.

How is it your free speech to use your company's bandwidth and server time to send emails?

You can go home and do whatever you want on your own machine. When your working you are on the company payroll so if they don't like what you are doing you should stop.

Free speech is an important right but it has nothing to do with this discussion

Re:so what?

[Anonymous Luddite]

My company has restrictive policies as well. we aggressively monitor systems use, external phone calls, email and internet traffic. I can tell you they're worried about the wrong thing:

USB drives are what the babysitters should be shitting themselves over. How many companies have a huge list of staff in engineering and other sensitive areas with have local admin rights?. plug, play, cut, paste and you could see hundred sensitive documents go to your competition.

Lift a gigabyte of restricted documents no one will notice, but send an email with a rude word in it and you get counselled for "unnaceptable" conduct.

security concious? no. righteous and moral? yes. wrong focus for a business, I think.