Who owns my email messages

All the little notes we had exchanged through the course of our entire relationship; the corny but endearing declarations, the extravagant anniversary plans, the mundane grocery lists.

Losing this account has taken the diary of my life with her and torched it. Banks Updated. Technology and Outsourcing. Hot Topics. Cell and Gene therapy. Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance. Standard Contractual Clauses. Tax Disputes. Personal Injury. Medical Negligence. Client Solutions. Key Solutions. Automation and Efficiency. Collaboration Tools. Fieldfisher Capital. Legal Resourcing. Alternative Legal Services. About Us. Our Organisation. Virtually every court to consider the issue has found that an employer may read emails employees send using the employer's company email system, even if the employee labels or considers those messages to be private.

Many employers adopt written policies stating that work emails are not private and require employees to sign a form acknowledging their understanding of this state of affairs.

Even without this extra step, however, courts have found in favor of the employer's right to monitor use of their own email systems. When it comes to personal email accounts, however, the rules are not as clear cut.

Some courts have held that employers may monitor an employee's personal email if the employee is using the company's equipment and the employer has warned employees that company-issued equipment is not for personal use and that all communications will be monitored. However, these decisions may vary by state and often depend on the circumstances of the monitoring, such as the contents of the email and how intrusive the employer was.

For example, at least one court has held that emails between an employee and his or her attorney should be considered private when they are sent through a personal, web-based email on a company computer unless the employer has specifically warned that these personal emails will be monitored.

It sounds like your employer's policy doesn't explicitly refer to private email accounts. However, if your employer had a clear policy informing employees that their use of personal email accounts on work computers was not private, and that the employer could monitor those messages, you might have a harder time winning an argument that those messages were confidential. As you can see, there are a number of open questions here and relatively little guidance so far on how courts will decide this issue.

So, if you value your email privacy, it might be best not to access your personal account on employer equipment. The information provided on this site is not legal advice, does not constitute a lawyer referral service, and no attorney-client or confidential relationship is or will be formed by use of the site.

The attorney listings on this site are paid attorney advertising. By Lisa Guerin , J. Nowadays, you shouldn't expect the email messages you write at work to remain private. Courts usually side with the employer when it comes to email privacy. And legality aside, many employers monitor employee email. This article explains the rules, the reality, and how to stay out of trouble. To learn about the workplace rules regarding employer surveillance and employee blogging during work hours, read Nolo's articles Cameras and Video Surveillance in the Workplace and Fired for Blogging.

Technology now makes it possible for employers to keep track of virtually all workplace communications by any employee. Why all the interest in what employees are writing? Part of it is a desire to avoid legal liability: Email creates an electronic document, which employers may have to hand over if they're sued.

Emails sent or received through a company email account are generally not considered private. Employers are free to monitor these communications, as long as there's a valid business purpose for doing so. Many companies reinforce this right by giving employees written notice for example, in an employee handbook that their work email isn't private and that the company is monitoring these messages. However, even if your employer doesn't have this type of written email policy, it still probably has the legal right to read employee email messages transmitted through company accounts.

On the other hand, if your company takes affirmative steps to protect the privacy of employee emails, it might have restricted its ability to monitor these communications. For example, you might have a stronger expectation of privacy if your employer has assured you that company emails are private, if your employer's system allows messages to be designated "confidential," or if you are allowed to create a private password known only to you.