Re: Ethics and mailboxes

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an this topic has taken on a life of it's own....

a distinction MUST be made here....

The capability and the authority to review any/all email MUST exist..

The exercise of that company right is at the companies discretion....

It is only fair to each employee that an email and internet usage policy
exitst and be acknowleged by each/all employees.

There are many legal and governmental situations where a company is REQUIRED
to produce documentation of company action or inaction. These include
production of any/all employee emails and correspondence.

We get back to after being informed by management of the policy, an employee
HAS NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY.

I wish to complement all the participants in the thread....this has been a
very varied exchange of ideas....I believe that we all should learn from
this forum and apply that to our business practices.

I AM OUTTA HERE and THANKS!

RickD



"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
<lanwench@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eB3heonbIHA.4284@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Phil <pwolford17@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 13, 9:24 am, "Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
<lanwe...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Phil <pwolfor...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Part of the reason the owners have IT staff is so that they do not
have to do it themselves. They trust us to make the right decisions
for the company. An owner won't look at logs or put the work in to
fix a security hole, that's not their job.

Sure, but that isn't relevant here.

In my opinion it really
shouldn't matter if an admin gets into e-mail.

That's your opinion - it doesn't make it either legal, or ethical.
Nor does it make it the business owner's opinion.

People like to throw
around privacy and their personal rights in these topics but I
wouldn't get into their home accounts or check the files on their
home computer, but I would check their work. For all those people
that think it is wrong then give me an alternative. Look at
congress, that guy was e-mailing and texting a minor and people got
all mad and asked why no one was checking his documents.

That's straw-man logic. Won't someone think of the children?

Now a subject like this comes
up and people wonder why we are checking their documents. If someone
is doing what they are suppose to then why would it even matter?
When it comes to documenting and giving new hires policies, I just
want to know how many of you (other than the people that wrote
them) know all of your companies policies regarding everything?

I know most of them.

I have to send out e-
mails every three months telling people to clean out e-mail, stop
sending chain letters, and stop exchanging porn.

Get software to do this for you - or decide you don't care. Just put
quotas on the mailboxes and the content doesn't have to be your
business. Nothing you need to do for general, regular, IT admin
requires seeing the contents of users' mail. :-)

All this talk about
it being fair or not, how is me having to clean up viruses and
freeing up server space fair for me?

What does that have to do with the contents of email ? Nothing
whatsoever. You should be running Exchange-aware antivirus anyway,
and blocking potentially dangerous file attachments. And use quotas.
Done.

If they utilize the technology then they
should not complain about people trying to get the best benefit out
of it. It's a system we use as a company to make money, plain and
simple, not their system to do as they please. We trust people to
do what is right with the technology we provide and I would be
liable if they abuse that trust.

I'm a consultant. I bill for my time, and I do what management says I
can/should do. I make suggestions and recommendations and it's up to
the business owners to take them or not. Some of their decisions may
bring me to decide I don't want to continue to work for them! It is
not my place to read employees' email unless the business owner
tells me to; nothing I need to do in my job requires that I have
access to their email.

Most companies I know would likely fire an IT person if they found
out that he or she was snooping without authorization.

Nuff said on this topic - I'm done.

As I said in an earlier post, they won't let me put on quotas or spend
money on software to do monitoring. I have anti-virus and a spam
filter but that's about it. When it comes to the space, I found
someone with over 100 MB of personal pictures in one e-mail. I was
told not to block out large attachments since we deal with CAD files.
As for authorization, I have that since they view it as being less
expensive than buying stuff to automatically do it. Maybe I should
have elaborated on my course of action. With our spam filter, I want
to BCC me to all files that are of certain type, size, or contain
certain wording. If I saw that someone received a lot of porn, videos,
pictures, or anything else not related to work then would that give me
the right to go into their e-mail? It's not like I would come in and
think to myself "I wonder what Sally's doing today" and get into her
stuff for no reason. That wouldn't be a very productive use of my
time.

I would stop working for this company, if they won't do things the way you
want them done.




.

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