Do Employers have the right to your e-mail password?

Question

Do employers have the right to demand your e-mail password so that they can monitor your activity to see who you're talking to and make sure you're saying what they want to hear to people. It's really to have total control over communication that takes place in the company and to make sure that the "executive" team isn't being talked about behind their back and also to make sure that people don't know and aren't talking about the boss and his extramarital affair. This can't be legal can it? He will say it's for occasional monitoring to make sure we're using e-mail for professional purposes, but I know better.

Answer 1

Well actually...if it is a company based email then yes they have every right, because technically the company owns that email address, because when you quit, you no longer have the right to that email and they can confiscate it to prevent you from doing anything under the company's name. But if it is your PERSONAL email then ABSOLUTELY NOT! they would have no right to yoru personal email password...but unfortunately if it is a company based email then the answer is yes, they do have the right to hte password...

Answer 2

I'm an IT professional and here is my take on this:

The email system and the servers are the property of the company and any emails passed through their system is also their property, whether or not it is personal or business related. Companies do reserve the right to monitor email and periodically check to ensure compliance with corporate policy and other regulatory bodies, such as in the case of financial or medical firms. If you intend to send and receive personal emails at work, use your own personal POP3 account, such as yahoo or gmail, but do be aware that if you use your corporate email account for personal use, you may be violating company policy and may be subject to discipline or termination.

For those of you who think that you have a right to privacy at the workplace, you are very wrong, because you are on the company's property, using their equipment, and any messages you send on their network is their property. I can't begin to tell you how many naive employees have found this out the hard way after being handed the pink slip for sending jokes using corporate email systems or using the internet for non-business related purposes.

Employers cannot ask to look into your personal yahoo or gmail account, but they can legally access your corporate mailbox on their email server to see what's in it.

Answer 3

I worked for a school board and my supervisor had everyone's passwords. He had access to all workstations on the network. Legal? I don't know, I tend to think it is, but he was a poster child for Mercenary, no-integrity, Liars of The World so I never did anything on my workstation that I would not want him to see. I had no problem with them monitoring web activity, or attachments, but standard text communication...that is private, so I just waited till I got home.

Answer 4

relies upon state regulation. contemporary situations have certainly discovered a extra robust point of non-public privateness for some forms of worker communique, to no longer point out limitations on whether an employer can take movements for something the worker reported in public. maximum of those are based upon NLRB regulations with regards to the worker's precise to talk with others approximately working circumstances. whether an employer hacking into an worker's inner maximum account on gmail is a criminal offense or civil violation would be a remember of state regulation as properly. in addition, in the event that they monitored your keystrokes while you used a business enterprise laptop to do a banking transaction, it would be a federal crime for them to apply that PIN or password to get admission to that exact same banking internet site. needless to say, if there's a blanket coverage on very own use of the business enterprise computers, then she would be fired for violating that coverage regardless of the content of her gmail and whether the boss accessed it.

Answer 5

Lady, at work, you are hired and paid to do what ever job for the hours that you were hired for! Computers at your work place do not belong to you. Unless your supervisors or company policy say that you may use their computers for your personal business and say you may stop doing the tasks they are paying you to do, you are stealing from the organization.

No firm pays you to do your personal business on their time.
You may not use the firms property for your personal business.

What would you say if they installed software that kept up with the time that you used their computers for your personal use and subtracted that time from the hours that you get paid for, and charged you a $5.00 a minute rental fee for the time that you used their computer?

Who has the right to come into your home and use your computer? Who has the right to use any bodies computer?

The employer has the absolute right to do any thing he/she wants
to do with their computer, exercise total control and dictate what may or may not be done on their computer. You have no rights concerning computers at your work place. NONE!

Answer 6

http://www.clm.com/pubs/pub-914447_3.html
Monitoring Employee E-mail, Voice Mail and Computer Files
Without Violating Employees' Privacy Rights

Answer 7

I would think if it's a company email address, then yes they should be able to. Make sure you do your gossiping under a non-company email address then!!! And hurry up and erase any that do!

Answer 8

Nope

Answer 9

no they can not ask you for your password. but they can monitor your email but you have to be aware of this policy

Answer 10

if you use the company computer yes its very legal, its not your property hopefully you use deffrent email than your personal one