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Mon 27 Dec, 2004 08:53 pm
Is it legal to delete an e-mail from another person's account? Let's say that a system administrator has access to everyone's e-mail and is asked to delete an e-mail from (an important) someone's account because a word was misspelled.
Is this the same as sending someone US (snail) mail? Say you then discover you misspelled something....then ask someone to open the mailbox (because they are able to do it) and remove and destroy the letter.
New territory, I am sure, but I am not certain where the law stands on e-mail...yet I do on regular mail.
Welcome to a2k, kleaches. Are you talking about a work situation?
The company I work for has a notice on the computer every time we log on that reminds us that there is no expectation of privacy in our email, voice mail, or phone conversations. I guess they can delete something from my inbox if they want to - it's not really mine...
mac11 wrote:
The company I work for has a notice on the computer every time we log on that reminds us that there is no expectation of privacy in our email, voice mail, or phone conversations. I guess they can delete something from my inbox if they want to - it's not really mine...
that would be pretty correct
mac has it right - if its the company computer, the company server, and the company email, its all the company's to do with as it pleases ... whether that pleases you or not. The key right you have in this situation is to work anywhere else you are able to - though no matter where you work, what you do at work on company premisis, on company time, with company assets and/or services pretty much is company business. They're payin' you, remember; you didn't hire them.
This has made me wonder something else. What about e-mail sent from your computer at work, but through a personal web account. Is that legally theirs too, since it is their IP address you are using to send it?
Deleting a file has only to do with whomever owns the medium on which it is stored.
For example you can retain ownership of the content you generated but whether said content will continue to exist on a certain media is largely up to the owner of said media.
So if you write out a digital missive on say, a library computer, you own the rights to the content but this does not include the right to require the library to store it on their computer for you.
Similarly, if your email is on a harddrive that someone else owns they usually have the right to delete it.
Thanks for clarifying.
Now...if a person is asked to check someone's e-mail accound and accidently reads somthing in the business account that is of a personal nature then repeats what they read to just one other person, what can the company do to the person who read and repeated the information?
This was a business account, business server, business computers....given the password and permission of the person to do so.
My knowlege of computer privacy is limited, but if you had been given permission and a key to open a locked desk drawer and had "accidently" read personal papers and had repeated this information....
Perhaps nothing will be set down on paper, but the trustworthiness of the snooping gossip is definitely qualified.
E-mail Snooping
Could anyone point me to more legal information concerning computer privacy in the work place?
This same business will not allow employees to change passwords (because they may forget them and that makes more work for the network administrator).
Unfortunately, the network administrator is the person who has gone into other people's accounts (with and without permission) and repeated information found there.
kleachespo wrote:Thanks for clarifying.
Now...if a person is asked to check someone's e-mail accound and accidently reads somthing in the business account that is of a personal nature then repeats what they read to just one other person, what can the company do to the person who read and repeated the information?
This was a business account, business server, business computers....given the password and permission of the person to do so.
The company can do pretty much whatever they want to do. This isn't any different than any other office gossip. If it's like most businesses they probably won't do much of anything.
Re: E-mail Snooping
kleachespo wrote:Could anyone point me to more legal information concerning computer privacy in the work place?
You might find
this helpful. You might also want to look at the Electronic Frontier's WWW site. They cover a lot of legal debates about on-line privacy.
Excellent information. I was able to find almost everything I want and needed to know.
I would like to know how Federal Law: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 will handle voice over IP, since phone lines are regulated a bit differently than e-mail. Voice communications now become the same type of digital material as the writing in e-mail.
I haven't found anything about v over ip yet...have any of you?
VoIP is still a bit up in the air. At the moment it's treated as "data" by law and FCC Regulation but there have been several recent attempts to change the laws/regulations to have VoIP fall under the same sort of regulatory scheme as the switched voice systems.
The FCC's VoIP page is here:
http://www.fcc.gov/voip/
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