I work for a small practice who I have reason to believe are monitoring the employee’s emails without their written or verbal consent. Is this legal and if not, what should I do?

Sounds sensible to me. In most offices, before email, all incoming post was opened centrally and outgoing letters were typed with a copy going “on file”.

Therefore if somebody was off sick, you would be able to find if things needed doing.

I don’t believe consent is required. Company owned hardware and software can be monitored without notice.

Surely you’d always assume that work email and internet use is monitored? As BigJohn said, it’s just ‘sensible’.

And out of curiosity, what are you doing that may get you into trouble?? 😉

They can do automated monitoring e.g. filtering for porn/viruses but reading your emails is likely to put them in breach of data protection legislation – see ICO practice guides.

We have a written policy that everyone has to sign. It states that we may access email if there is a business reason to do so (which can include abuse of it for personal email). Whether that’s really required is debateable and it’s my understanding that we could monitor it anyway so long as we had reason to do so.

There is also a right to an expectation of privacy under European legislation. Right to a Family Life or something I think it comes under.

But no, they shouldn’t be reading emails, in spite of the fact that all email is owned by the company and is not personal, workers assume that it is.

You can only legally acccess somebody’s email for good reason, and not routinely but for a specific purpose.

P.S there is a difference between monitoring and reading btw

work e-mail is for work plain and simple.

mikewsmith – Member
work e-mail is for work plain and simple.

That

I can’t believe you’d assume it WASNT monitored/read at times?!

There is also a right to an expectation of privacy under European legislation. Right to a Family Life or something I think it comes under.

I don’t believe that would apply in a place of work.

been a while now (5 years?), but I worked for a large corporation in IT, and the email admin’s were aware that a certain user was recieving very dodgy email (think extremist) but nothing could be done about it, due to data protection.
They would have dearly loved to get rid of this loser (he really was), but couldn’t as they weren’t legal allowed to read his emails – I believe he’s still there….
Total hearsay, but that what forums are about aren’t they?

from http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/ResolvingWorkplaceDisputes/DiscriminationAtWork/DG_10026574

Employment Human rights in the workplace

Your human rights are protected by the law. If your employer is a public authority, they must follow the principles of the Human Rights Act. Read about your human rights at work and what to do if you think they have been breached.
The Human Rights Act

The Human Rights Act is based on the European Convention on Human Rights and adds protection for workers’ rights and freedoms. Provisions within the Act deal with work-related matters.

If you work in the public sector, it’s unlawful for your employer to violate your human rights under the Convention, unless an Act of Parliament means it has no choice.

If your employer isn’t a public authority you can’t make a claim against your employer for breach of your human rights. However, human rights law has been incorporated into general employment law (for example, not to be discriminated against because of your sexuality) and applies to all employers.

Any decision by an Employment Tribunal must follow the principles laid out in the Convention.

* Human rights (government, citizens and rights section)

Human rights at work

Many of the principles of the Human Rights Act are designed to protect you as a worker within the workplace.

For example, you have the right to a private and family life. So an employer who discriminates against a gay worker, for example, may be violating that worker’s right to a private life.

Your employer has the right to monitor communications within the workplace as long as you are aware of the monitoring before it takes place. Monitoring can cover:

* emails
* internet access
* telephone calls
* data
* images

You have the right to see any information held about you (for example, emails or CCTV footage).

Your right to a private life means you have the right to some privacy in the workplace. You can’t be monitored everywhere. If your employer doesn’t respect this, they will be breaching human rights law (as well as UK law).

Just beat me to it. Legally, they’re obliged to tell you if they’re reading your email. They don’t require your consent per sé, but they must notify you that they’re doing it.

Thanks for the responses.

Nothing to be concerned about within my emails, use of the business email is solely uses for business emails. I agree with them keeping track of what people are doing in the workplace to ensure productivity. Problem is my employers haven’t notified me and seem to think they can do things without following the rules.

My recollection that they could monitor but they need to tell you they do.

Place I worked every single (work) e-mail was read by the boss (and the secretaries…).

They got around things by making you sign an IT declaration which before they set you up with internet connection/e-mail address which acknowledged/allowed them to. To be honest that an important e-mail could come in when you were on a fortnights holiday and lie unopened and that the secretaries did all the electronic filing I didn’t see an issue. I always used an internet based service for personal stuff used to leave it running like my work email…

We tell our staff that internet and email is monitored. In reality it never is, but we can if we wanted with good reason. My boss can access my email at anytime as he has the leadership teams logins, so if we are ill/away/up a hill he can respond or pick up customers messages if needed. I have no problem with it, and unless you have something to hide I cannot see why you would…

Spam reported.

As has been said, they need to inform you. I’m surprised in this day and age all employers aren’t making their employees since IT AUP’s that cover this sort of thing. they might not have any legal basis but at least it leaves people in doubt what’s acceptable and what’s being monitored etc.