Work cell phone privacy

[Patrick425]

My wife has a smart work that she got through work. She's also putting feelers out there for a possible other job. She's doing some of this online and through email. She knows she has to be careful about not using company technology to access job hunt sites, but she would like to have access to her "job hunt" related email during the day. She obviously does not want to use her work email account to do this. She set up a hotmail account, but is concerned that if she uses her phone to access that her work will be able to see her Hotmail emails. I told her that I didn't think that was possible. I'm thinking that they could possibly see that she visited Hotmail, but really had no way of reading her Hotmail emails. She works for a large company. Is there any technology, other than hacking into her hotmail account, that would allow her work to read her Hotmail emails?

[greeg35]

I know we have the capability here to take screen shots of what is going on at any given time on someone's computer screen...

[Patrick425]

Makes sense that they would be able to see just about anything you do on your computer, but I'm wondering if there is any access that would allow them to view your cell phone content or browser. Another part of this is that my wife can not access Hotmail (or many other websites) from her work computer, but does not have any browsing restrictions on her work cell phone.

[endaround]

They can likely track what sites she looks at. Not sure if they can see what is on those sites.

[Paul77]

I know we have the capability here to take screen shots of what is going on at any given time on someone's computer screen...

My company too.

[GAME05]

i once bypassed the company firewall and visited espn for all of 10 minutes at work once--got in trouble for that, so clearly IT can see what sites you're visiting. if they can do that with a regular work PC i don't see why they can't do that with a phone.

 

i wonder what the privacy laws are regarding personal email accounts sent using company computers.

 

i've done my share of job searching while at work. at first i was a little paranoid about it, but then i realized that IT guys more than likely aren't spending their days (or their breaks from D&D) searching to see if anyone is searching an industry job site. plus, would IT guys be so cruel as to report it even if they found it? i wasn't job searching for very long at all, and i don't think a brief internet check matches something as funny as getting caught printing your resume on the company printer.

[homer]

I know we have the capability here to take screen shots of what is going on at any given time on someone's computer screen...

But that's only when they're on your network right? Either in the office on on the VPN.

 

I almost positive they can't see emails contained on hotmail. They can only tell if you've been on hotmail. They can definitely tell what you've texted and what you've sent via email, but I doubt they can see email if its through a web site. The only way they'd see email is if, for example, you had a blackberry and routed the hotmail through the blackberry server to your blackberry email. Then I think they could see them.

[logan82]

i wonder what the privacy laws are regarding personal email accounts sent using company computers.

 

My guess is you have no right to privacy when using company computers. You would have to check your company's policy.

[sgtcluels]

What kind of smart phone? That goes a long way in determining what they can see. Blackberries have a very extensive loggin capacity. While I don't recall them being able to look at emails from other applications, they can audit your web activity, text messages and phone calls easily.

[DuWayne Steurer]

i wonder what the privacy laws are regarding personal email accounts sent using company computers.

 

My guess is you have no right to privacy when using company computers. You would have to check your company's policy.

It's right in my company's contract that there is no expectation of privacy when browsing or checking email on a work computer. Lucky for me I work from home, so I have my laptop on my own home connection right at my desk for personal browsing.

[GAME05]

i was reading some articles on this out of curiosity, and from what i saw, the only time an employee won a privacy case on this was when he was emailing his lawyer from a work computer on his private email account based on lawyer-client confidentiality. related was the case of an idiot who was emailing her lawyer using the company's email account (how to sue my company type stuff)--she lost.

 

so reading all the accounts, the individual has basically zero right to privacy when using company property.

 

in every case, though, it was somebody being fired for saying something stupid over email or getting fired in general.

 

i read a statistic once that said about 14% ( a lot based on crooked memory) of employees used work computers to do job hunting, so i can't imagine you'd be alone in quickly checking personal email on a work phone.

[Patrick425]

Thanks for all the feedback. I realize that an employee has zero rights when it comes to privacy and use of company equipment. It's not a case where my wife is going to sue the company if they look at her emails. She is just wondering how much privacy she has with her phone. I can't imagine that there is technology that would allow her company to tap into her hotmail account that she uses over the phone and be able to read her hotmail emails. I'm just wondering if any that may work in IT is familiar with something that would allow this.

[rwa12]

I don't believe they would be able to see specific emails. Like someone said, there is the ability for keylogging. I think a lot would have to do with the type of company she is with. Large corporation, small firm, etc. I work for the government, while we have the ability to record and review everything; the threat of doing such is enough to keep most honest.

[endaround]

If she is really worried about it it might just be worth it to pick up another phone from Cricket or similar for a few months.