Email Ethical Dilemmas

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.

Many organizations experience employee abuse of the internet. This abuse of the internet can be defined as any use of the internet for personal purposes during work hours. This behavior can include accessing personal social media sites, blogging sites, news sites, shopping and accessing inappropriate content such as pornographic sites. Employees need to be aware that there are consequences for this type of abuse. In order for organizations to protect their business interests, policies should be created and enforced in order to protect the business and other employees from any violations or repercussions.

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."

Many employers appoint surveillance within the workplace for a variety of reasons such as safety, prevention of theft or misuse and performance checks. The issues identified within this article are that of whether the monitoring that was carried out was necessary or whether

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

“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

Slide two introduces the audience to the “whys” behind the behavior of some companies. In other words, slide two provides a good outline detailing reasons why organizations feel the need to monitor employee email and internet usage. Some of the information provided in this slide are: firms can investigate complaints

Workplace monitoring is a way of keeping an eye on conditions and activities in a workplace such as health, security and business reasons. New technologies have changed the way we do and manage the things in work place during the last decades. Employers can use the information that they collected in a variety of ways and technology allows employers to monitor many aspects of their employee’s workplace activities. Monitoring sometimes violate the employees’ privacy rights, so many types of monitoring are allowed under the law. Sometimes technologies have increased employer risks beyond the production and cost benefits.

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

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.

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?

Employee monitoring has been on the rise since the boost for technology in the business world. Different Organizations engage in monitoring of employee’s to track performance and to avoid legal liability, protect business secrets and to address other concerns such as security. Certain monitoring practices are not upheld by employees because of the downfall it has on their satisfaction of privacy. Employers typically must not show some of their private monitoring duties while in the workplace, but how much monitoring they can do can become a huge issue when it’s invading natural privacy rights. There is a debate raging on whether it is moral, ethical and legal for employers to monitor the actions of their employees. Employer’s believe that monitoring is a sure thing because it encourages positive behavior and discourage illicit activity and to limit liability. Although, with this problem of monitoring of employees, many are experiencing a negative effect on emotional and physical stress including fatigue and lack of motivation within the workplace. Employers might choose to monitor employee’s activities using surveillance cameras, or may wish to record employee’s activities while using company owned computers or telephones. Courts are finding that disputes between workplace privacy and freedom are being complicated with the forward move in advance technology as traditional rules that govern areas of

* 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.

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.