A new article in the Wall Street Journal examines the trend in courts to limit employer access to an employee’s private emails, even when the employee is using the employer’s computer during work hours. The article relates the Virginia case where an employer monitored an employee’s personal AOL account, and the employee sued and won at trial for the unauthorized access. Notably, since 52% of workers access their personal email at work, and 38% of employers with 1,000 or more employees assign people to monitor outgoing email, this issue will only get more prevalent, and perhaps more contentious.
We discussed some lessons for employers from recent court decisions here, and more generally addressed the limits of employee monitoring by employers here.
