[afnog] Forwarding all outgoing mail to single user

Hervey Allen hervey at nsrc.org
Tue Oct 18 20:41:24 EAT 2005


Antonio Godinho wrote:
> All the workers know about it since they have been told. Not a privacy issue 
> in this case since they can still access their private email elsewhere. 
> 

I don't normally respond to stuff like this...

But, it's definitely a privacy issue. There is no privacy 
for employees of this company in their business dealings. 
Reading everyone's email is just the same as taping 
everyone's phone conversations. It stifles free exchange of 
opinions and ideas among employees and among potential 
clients since employees will be worried about saying 
anything negative, or that could be miscontrued.

Some US businesses have been doing this for quite some time. 
The results are mixed. Surveys show this is a high area of 
concern among employees - so much so that those who have a 
choice sometimes choose to work somewhere else where they 
are trusted.

This does nothing to protect the company from loss of 
company secrets or from the employees using company time to 
read their email if they have access to port 443/80 in their 
web browsers. If the company has this blocked, then at least 
they are following through on their draconian measures.

That's just my .02.

At least they're not using keyboard sniffers or network 
sniffers (yet) as some companies have done.

Cheers,
	- Hervey



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