Email Ethical Dilemmas

The most common form of an invasion, to employee privacy rights is email. With the massive use of computers, email has become the biggest communication tool of choice in the workplace. The concern of employers has grown tremendously with the use of email in the workplace. Employers' concern is that, employees can waste time by sending and receiving email for personal use, and they may provide easy access for hackers to entry their computer system. Employers can monitor an employee computer activity to ensure productivity in the workplace. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (2006) states, "Unfortunately, if an employee uses a company computer for email use, the employee employer has the right to review the contents of his or her email."

Privacy has remained a concern in the world but there have been numerous cases regarding privacy in the workforce. Privacy among the work environment brings ethical dilemma of whether companies have the rights to monitor their employees email, computer and internet usage. When we think about workforce privacy, one worries about the email and internet information that is gathered from being monitored being used for good or bad with current issues regarding known companies’ employees and customer’s personal information being hacked.

Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.

“Employee privacy has become a greater concern as more and more employees have turned to the Internet and other electronic media to communicate both on and off the job. ... Employers can generally search through anything that happens on company computers” (Employee

E-mail has rapidly become a staple of the modern office. Currently, two-thirds of employees in medium and large companies in the United States now have Internet access, compared with fifteen percent only two years ago. The availability of e-mail allows for messages to be widely and rapidly distributed, improving efficiency and reducing cost. In addition to being one of the components of the new workplace, e-mail is also the center of a hot privacy debate. Part of this is because, unlike regular mail, which is difficult to monitor, e-mail can be scanned with ease, allowing employers to engage in monitoring at an unprecedented rate, and raising the specter of a workplace free of privacy. As this relatively new technology gains ever increasing prevalence, certain questions

This is an email regarding our email etiquette assignment. The following paragraphs are my responses to a few of the questions, which will give you a better understanding of my previous academic background, concerns about this course, personal situation and also, skills which I would like to acquire.

With the rise of advanced technology, there arose the threat of surveillance and privacy invasion in the workplace. An employee, by the very nature of the employment relationship, must be subject to some level of monitoring by the employer. However, this monitoring has its limits. Rights of privacy primarily are related to organizational invasion of a person?s private life and unauthorized release of confidential information about a person in a way that would cause emotional harm or suffering (2). It is the

Every Single day it is indeed a full-time job for the network administrator to keep up with the changing technologies. These new technologies come with new challenges, threats, and vulnerabilities which a smart network administrator must solve to keep the system secure. The network administrator must keep up with new hacking techniques, latest countermeasures, and in-depth knowledge of company’s data to address the suspicious activities and minimize their effects. But then comes the question of Ethics. Should the network administrator access employees’ private emails or websites logs to ensure company’s rules aren’t violated? Is it ok to browse employees’ documents or graphics files stored on the computers or on file servers? So, the network administrator has both charms and pitfalls as he has a huge responsibility to secure the company by carrying out his duties in an ethical way. This paper explains some ethical and social challenges a future network administrator may encounter in a company. The paper also introduces some basic ways the new network administrator can use to maintain a healthy, trustful, and ethical relationship between his work and the society.

As I wake from my deep sleep of twelve hours, I step out of bed and go about my daily summer routine. I wash my face and peruse through the fridge for something to eat; its noon, meaning the mail is in. I step out of the house to check the mailbox. I’ve always looked forward to receiving the mail, as most people do until they are old enough to pay the bills. I bring back the mail to the dining table as I commence to eat the leftover SPAM my mom cooked and hope for a magazine or catalog to look at. As I sift through the hoard of envelopes at my disposal, I sort them into their respective categories: “Bill, bill, junk mail, letter, junk mail, letter, catalog, bill,

discounts, trendy products, free shipping and limited time offer entice you in your personal inbox daily. But what about your work email? How often do you take the time to read an offer from another business and actually respond to it?

* In today’s world of fast-developing technology, in which the click of mouse can dispense a plethora of information, privacy for job seekers and employees is a significant issue. One type of privacy issue in the workplace occurs when a company gathers or circulates private or personal information about employees or candidates for employment.

Employee Privacy is a subject that gets questioned increasingly as companies grow and new technologies evolve. We all know about the basic rights that we have in the workplace when it comes to the use of computers and company owned equipment. This an area that most of the time favors the employer when it comes to the local and federal privacy laws. The employer has a right to protect its assets, but at the same time, must also protect the employee's privacy. In this paper, we will look at some of the privacy rights that employees have and may not know about how some of the changes may affect them.

This article is aimed at providing the larger audience an overview of the ethics of the workplace related to the issues of ownership, privacy and monitoring in a working environment. There are practical examples to demonstrate how ethics play an important role in working environments related to information privacy but still there is less consensus on uniquely identifying specific ethical issues. Employees at different organization may define ethics from their own perspective which makes it difficult to implement code of conducts that have been suggested to be incorporated in the day to day activities at working places.

Many modern day commercial firms have a system of computer based network to track the activities of their employees at the workplace. Employers can track the emailing and browsing history alongside any other activity carried out by an employee using computers even if they clear the history (Reynolds, 2011). Companies are on the run to come up with strict policies to track the use of the computers among employees. Some firms argue that computer based monitoring is important although it is quite expensive to install and maintain (Hugl, 2013).

Employers believe employees are taking advantage of the Internet while at work to access inappropriate websites such as shopping, gambling, pornographic material, and illegal downloading. Therefore, employers are searching for ways to reduce Internet exploring and increase work production, and remain within the state and federal guidelines (Young, 2011). To combat these issues, monitoring technologies are put in place to make employees more productive during company’s work hours. Monitoring technologies are classified as the use of computerized system that automatically collect, store, analyze, and report information about how an employee is performing his/her job (Wen, Schwieger & Gershuny, 2007). This helps companies to track their employee’s Internet movements, obtain detailed information (Wen, Schwieger & Gershuny, 2007), and protect the privacy of their company. In return, employers hope this will limit or eliminate employees from extensive use of the Internet.