If you care about secure email, you need to read this article. Did you know that corporate e-mail accounts are not considered priviledged and confidential, even if the company’s own policy explicitly states that it is?
That’s what happened in the case of Smyth versus Pillsbury, where an employee of the giant food company was fired over his e-mail response to a supervisor’s e-mail message, even though the company policy specifically stated that company e-mail is to be regarded as confidential and priviledged, and that no employment decision shall be based whatsoever on any e-mail messages whatsoever, from anyone!
So much for secure email at the workplace, huh? But there’s more.
Companies actually hire other companies to sort through the e-mail…all of it. Routinely. Like having the maid come along once a week or so to clean the offices, or, better yet, just like having an exterminator come along every month, as e-mail is considered “the cockroach of the electronic world,” as Ms. Charnock of Cataphora put it during an interview with NPR: very hard to get rid of.
That’s because even though you may have deleted your e-mail message, it may have been backed up on the server – or recipients may still have a copy. Secure email, you say?
That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. For the truth is, no e-mail is a hundred percent “secure” – at least not ordinarily so. You’d have to make sure that your server keeps no copies of anything; absolutely none whatsoever – and there may be state and federal laws requiring companies to keep a copy, under certain circumstances.
Of course, the term “security” is meant in a relative sense, and there are indeed many things which can be done to improve the security of e-mail. Everyone should educate him or herself on some basic e-mail safety guidelines as soon as possible!