# Accessing email at work. Can employer read it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 6, 2001, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829 "2001-11-06T18:35:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/21 "2001-11-07T20:57:21Z")
Of course, if you want to be secure, but still keep up, ahem, communications with your wife, you could just devise a code of some sort between the two of you. A typical message might look something like “Hey, honey, what do you say we take the dog for a walk tonight? I hear that the weather will be good… We may even be able to do some stargazing”. Of course, without knowing you or your wife far closer than would be comfortable for anyone involved, I’ve no clue what “walking the dog”, “good weather”, or “stargazing” would mean, but I’m sure you could think of something ;). ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/22 "2001-11-07T21:56:00Z")
If you need to send and receive email privately, check out a company that is in the business of providing SECURE email. [http://www.hushmail.com](http://www.hushmail.com) is a company that lets your connection from them stay encrypted for the entire transaction. I know there are others, but I don’t know their names offhand. The login is encrypted, as is the data stream that consists of you sending and receiving email via their web interface. It’s like HoTMaiL with security. Anyone snooping the connection from your wife to these people would just see a bunch of gibberish. And not only is it gibberish, but to convert the stream to useful information would take more computing power than anyone this side of the NSA has access to. The only thing your wife would need to worry about would be visual spying in the office and the risk of screen snooping based on say, SMS or some other proprietary software that her employer chooses to use. One of the earlier posters suggested using an account similar to a school telnet account. I must point out that that is a terrible idea. It is perhaps even easier to snoop a telnet session than it would be to snoop a web browser’s HTTP session. I, personally, get mushy email from my partner via email. I have no company policy prohibitting that, however, rather than have some IT guy at my employer snoop my email and read messages in which I am referred to with embarrassing nicknames I have a work-around. I maintain an outside server, and I establish an “ssh” or secure shell session to that server and use a university-style email client on that to read my email. However, that is not a reasonable solution for most Americans of average computer literacy. I hope I’ve answered your question with this. ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/23 "2001-11-07T22:12:50Z")
Hushmail is a good solution, but there are equally good encryption systems that integrate with whatever email client you’re already using. Using something like PGP with your normal email client gives you more flexibility than Hushmail and makes you less dependent on a third-party provider. However, in either case if the network admins start seeing encrypted data going across their firewall, they might be more upset than they would be about mushy email. Also, no amount of encryption prevents them from snooping the monitor with VNC or screen scrapers. FWIW, SSH is a great solution, but I don’t think it takes any more computer literacy than using telnet. The functionality is the same, the clients themselves are essentially the same, and since it’s getting harder and harder to find people who will give you telnet access to anything, SSH is probably easier to set up. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/24 "2001-11-07T23:01:36Z")
There was a little story in Wired mag on this a while back. I dug it up…[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.03/mustread.html](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.03/mustread.html) There is software that HR departments or management can use to screen for certain words in emails, then pass them along to someone to review. The best thing going for peoples privacy is simply the fact that there is too much for any person to screen. This is the same reason I am not too worried about the new laws allowing the FBI to easedrop electronically on suspects. I am not to worried about them having the resources available to read my emails to my girlfriend. Here is an example list of words that this particular software screening looks for: bimbo alarm pad David Duke resume fondle ATF job offer ammonium nitrate reefer I’ll show him/her fertilizer anarchy signing bonus bacteriological meth copyright Puerto Rican stress pipe bombs unfair Aryan performance review My recomendation? Send this list to everyone you know. With a little message attached to the HR manager who sits there reading peoples email all day. “HI, DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO?” Or, you could use the above words to make the perfectly un-PC paragraph. " I got a **signing bonus** for **fondling** **hitler** ’s **copyrighted** **meth** the other day"\*\* ---
**Author:** ![MattV](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@MattV](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MattV)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/25 "2001-11-08T17:11:00Z")
I’m the IT Manager at my company and I run logging software on all the PC’s but I rarely monitor it due to time constraints. I’m also an owner, so my interest and the company’s are the same. I can read every key click and grab screen shots of what you are doing, so yes, I could read your e-mail, regardless of the encryption. I can even see the password you type to get into your web based mail account, so it’s not that private. I take the responsibility very seriously and don’t snoop around unless there is reason for suspicion. We own the PC you work on and everything that you do with it and we have full right to see what’s going on. This is all stated in the employee handbook and you must sign a form that says you read it and accept the terms…lest you think we’re snooping. Some time ago, we had a worker quit in a tantrum one day. I was monitoring the activity from that point until the day they left and found out the employee had exported a database to a CSV file and used their webbased mail to send it to themself. I took the password from their log file, went into the account and deleted my stolen database, right in front of the employee. Since the contents of the DB could be valued at close to a million dollars, that was the least of what could have happened to them. This person had enough problems in their personal life, they didn’t need any more, despite their bad decisions. I decided cut the employee a major break by taking care of the issue myself. While this may seem invasive to privacy, I’m protecting the company’s assets and interests and I was still considerate enough to spare this person some serious trouble. If you feel your privacy is at stake, don’t use my PC and my time for your personal business and it won’t be an issue. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/26 "2001-11-08T17:54:33Z")
Feh. It’ll just be simpler if we confine our flirting to the basement of our own home, behind the locked vault door, after midnight, using the cone of silence. ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829/27 "2001-11-08T18:08:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Qadgop the Mercotan \* > \*\*Feh. It’ll just be simpler if we confine our flirting to the basement of our own home, behind the locked vault door, after midnight, using the cone of silence. \*\* The cone of silence has a known exploit which allows crackers to dump output straight to streaming RealAudio. Also, if your basement walls are in direct contact with surrounding ground, sonar processing can be used to reconstruct 3-D holographic representations of your, um, flirting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accessing-email-at-work-can-employer-read-it/91829.md?page=1)