I recently read that Proofpoint, an email security company, conducted a survey of 220 U.S. companies with over 1000 employees. 38% of them report that they employ people whose job it is to read or otherwise analyze the content of outgoing email. These firms explain their actions as a result of concern with the potential of sensitive information being disseminated. You don’t have to be involved in corporate espionage, however, to be adversely affected. Another study conducted by the ePolicy Institute in collaboration with the American Management Association on workplace e-mails found 25% of those employers surveyed have fired an employee for violating e-mail policy.

You may be thinking:

• This will never happen to me
• I spend so much time at work that the company owes me the chance to check some personal “to-do’s” off the list
• Everybody else is doing it so I can too

While you may feel safe, you probably aren’t.

Consider the plight of Heidi Arace and Norma Yetsko who were fired from PNC Bank for forwarding joke emails. When CBS News covered their story back in 2004, a judge had dismissed their wrongful termination suit against the back and they were appealing the dismissal; I was not able to find any updated but my guess is that they weren’t successful.

Below are some rules for staying out of trouble when using your work computer:

• Be sure you know your company’s policies and stay within the rules.

• Remember you have no reasonable expectation of privacy – the email you send and receive, the IMs you casually exchange and the urls you visit are all fair game for your employer

• IP addresses are traceable to the individual computer so posting gripes about your boss or complaints about your company are not as anonymous as you might think

• Don’t give your work email address to friends who might embarrass you by sending you inappropriate email

• If you must send an occasional non-work related message, do it from your personal email account.

Readers, have you had any difficult situations related to your use of technology at work? Do you have any other suggestions to offer?

TAGS: email, IM, LinkedIn, office policy, using technology