Email privacy at work: Your employer can lie to you about reading your emails… and then fire you for relying on these lies!

Most employees probably know that the emails sent from their work email accounts are probably being monitored. However, what if your employer repeatedly assures you that all e-mail communications would remain confidential and privileged? What if your employer further tells you that e-mail communications could not be intercepted and used by against you as grounds for termination or reprimand? Can your employer still intercept your emails, read them, and then fire you for the contents…? YOU BET!!hahahaha

In Smyth v. Pillsbury Co., 914 F. Supp. 97 (1996), Pillsbury maintained a company e-mail system which the employees used to communicate among themselves. Mr. Smyth was an employee of Pillsbury. Pillsbury assured Mr. Smyth as well as the other employees that all e-mail communications would remain confidential and privileged and that the e-mail communications could not be intercepted and used against the employees as grounds for termination or reprimand.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania surprisingly held that despite the assurances made by Pillsbury, its employees did not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mail communications voluntarily made by an employee to his supervisor over the company e-mail system.” The Court went on to hold that no “reasonable person would consider the . . . interception of these communications to be a substantial and highly offensive invasion of his privacy.”

So, In my opinion These are some of the preventive measures in order to avoid the hassle and problem of emials in office ?

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1. Always assume that your employer will read every email you send from work or home (using remote access to your work email).
2. If your employer assures you that your emails will remain confidential… do not believe it.
3. If your employer assures you that your emails will not be used to reprimand or fire you… do not believe it.
4. Email privacy at work does not exist.

CYBERCRIME and the Hazards with it

The term “ Cybercrime” is broadly defined to include any criminal activity committed on the internet. Almost everyone has at least a basic understanding about online identity theft, probably the most common cybercrime. However, there appears to be considerable confusion regarding some of the other basic cybercrimes and their definitions. I recently visited the website of a firm where the terms phishing and spoofing were incorrectly used interchangeably!

Some of the most common cybercrimes are:

Email spoofing – The forgery of an e-mail header in a manner that the message appears to have originated from somewhere other than the actual source. Widely used by spammers, a spoofed e-mail may appear to be from a legitimate source asking for personal information, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.

Phishing – The sending of an email to a recipient in an attempt to scam the recipient into revealing private information. The email contains a link to what appears the website of a legitimate enterprise but is only a fake version of the organization’s website. When the recipient visits the fake website, the recipient is asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers that the legitimate organization already has.

Cookie Poisoning – Some websites store cookies on your computer's hard drive to authenticate your identity, speed up your transactions, monitor your behavior, and personalize your website experience. Cookie poisoning is the modification of a cookie by an attacker to gain unauthorized access to private information about the user. The attacker may use this private information for identity theft and to gain access to the user's existing accounts.

Wardriving - War driving is the process of traveling around using a Wi-Fi enabled computer looking for wireless access point signals that can be used to get network access. The most common use of wardriving is to steal somebody else’s Internet access.

Malware “malicious software” – The developing of a program or file that is harmful to a computer, including computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and spyware.

Pod Slurping - The unauthorized download of data from a computer to a storage device such as a MP3 player, flash drive or iPod. This technique is commonly used by data thieves to steal contents from corporate computers.

Cyber stalking – Cyber stalking is a crime in which the attacker harasses a victim using electronic communications such as email, instant messaging, or forum posts. Unlike a spammer, a cyberstalker targets and usually threatens a specific victim.

Cyberlaw is a term that encapsulates the legal issues related to use of communicative, transactional, and distributive aspects of networked information devices and technologies.

It is less a distinct field of law in the way that property or contract are, as it is a domain covering many areas of law and regulation.

Some leading topics include intellectual property, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction.


TYPES OF CYBERCRIME
1. Unauthorized Access to Computer System and Service
2. Illegal Contents
3. Data Forgery
4. Cyber EspionageCyber Sabotage and Extortion
5. Offense against Intellectual Property
6. Infringements of Privacy
7. Cracking
8. Carding