Your email is not private at work

A new study found that more than thirty percent of big companies who employ 1,000 people or more in the United States and Britain, are hiring people to read and analyze outbound employee email. The same companies stated that their business was hurt by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information in the past.

In the United States, forty-four percent of companies with 20,000 employees or more said that they snoop on worker e-mails.

“What folks are concerned about is confidential or sensitive information that is going out,” said Gary Steele, chief executive of Cupertino, California, company Proofpoint, which conducted the study along with Forrester Research.

Also in the US, about a third of the companies surveyed, estimated that 20 percent of outgoing e-mails contain content that poses a legal, financial or regulatory risk, and also said that they had fired at least one employee in the past year for violating email policies.