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Do you have access to the internet at your workplace? If so, there's a good chance you have used it for personal purposes on at least a few occasions - setting up a free email account, shopping, listening to internet radio, reading the news, playing free online games - you get the picture. But if you work for one of the many companies that monitor employee computer activity, chances are your boss has seen everything you've seen.
More and more employers are using technology that allows them to track and record the online habits of employees, including sites they visit, emails they send, free online games they play, and images they download. The reasons employers do this range from gauging worker productivity to preventing harassment in the workplace that might result from the transmission of pornographic images to controlling the amount of company bandwidth used by such downloads as internet radio or mp3s. Employees in turn are wondering about their right to privacy under these workplace laws. They may find, however, that the law is not on their side.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, neither common law nor Federal statutory law grants employees privacy protection in the case of their personal emails or internet use in the workplace. In fact, though the Electonic Communications Privacy Act, which restricts the intentional interception of an email, does not extend to protecting employees from having their personal free email accounts used at a work computer monitored by their employer. The ordinary course- of-business exception in this act permits the monitoring of email messages sent as part of the ordinary course of business, which employers may interpret to include company emails sent from a free email account on company time. And some employers exercise their rights to the full extent, using software to carry out the task of monitoring and recording their employees' actions. Examples of some of the methods beyond traditional URL blocking companies are using are:
- On-proxy filtering, which categorizes URLs for easy blocking access
- Deep content inspection
- Identifying and associating the exact user with his internet browsing behavior
- Intercepting all email sent from a workplace computer, both personal and business-related
If you decide to use your internet connection at work for personal use, such as playing free online games or listening to internet radio, it is important to know the penalty for doing so. Some companies may not have very strict policies and may allow you limited personal use - for example, you may be able to get permission from a supervisor to enjoy internet radio stations while you work or send a limited amount of personal email from your free email account. But you need to be sure that what you view and send at work is appropriate, legal, and within the guidelines of what your company considers acceptable. And, as with any workplace freedom, be sure not to abuse it - taking advantage of allowed online access to the point where your productivity suffers may result in restrictions being placed on your usage, and may even result in your termination.
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