No E-Mail Privacy at Work

Re “Workers Lament Loss of E-Mail Privacy on Job,” Oct. 11: As an office worker, it’s always been obvious to me that any time you log onto a computer with your employee number and personal password, what you do on that computer can and will be monitored, whether it’s your keystrokes per hour or how much time you spend away from your desk. It comes as a surprise to me that so many people out there inexplicably thought that their e-mail and Internet activity on their office computers was confidential and anonymous.

I have to wonder how many managers who have used the company computers to monitor their employees’ performance are now themselves the target of some unwanted computer monitoring of their e-mail messages. But no matter--I keep hearing that our economy is booming and that we are in the midst of a tight labor market, so I assume that any worker who is unhappy that his/her e-mail is being monitored should simply quit and find another company to work for.

MATTHEW OKADA

Pasadena

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Your article implies that employees are losing their “right” to have private communications at their jobs. Advocates of this position are forgetting that both the computers and time the employee is using belong to the employer and that using either for personal matters amounts to theft.

Further, routine use of the Internet and e-mail for nonbusiness purposes increases network traffic, which not only deteriorates network services and response time, but if seriously abused (by downloading pornography, e-mailing trade secrets to a competitor or sending harassing e-mails) can be a serious legal and therefore financial liability to the employer.

As a professional whose business includes the forensic examination of computer hard drives, I have seen enough of the deleterious effects of lax monitoring of computers to recommend that all employers require workers to sign yearly agreements or acknowledgments that any information stored on company computers is considered company property and subject to monitoring. “Nothing disappears without a trace.”

MONIQUE BRYHER

Tarzana