NYTimes has an interesting article[1] about Scott Sidell who is suing his company for snooping on his yahoo email account. Mr Sidell, who was recently fired from Structured Settlement Investments, claims that his former employer read e-mail messages that he had sent to his lawyers discussing his strategy for winning an arbitration claim over his lost job.
Typically employers maintain the right to monitor employee's internet activity, but in this case, Mr. Sidell had already left the company when the emails were read by his former employer. It appears that Mr. Sidell had forgot to logout of his Yahoo email account on the company's computer, which kept the logon session open for another 2 weeks. In their defense, Structured Settlement Investment, said that Mr. Sidell had returned to office after being fired, and sent trade secrets and company confidential information to his Yahoo account from a colleague's computer. This would be a violation of the non-compete and employment contract that Mr. Sidell had signed with his former employer. However to use these emails as evidence for contractual breach, Structured Settlement would have to plead guilty to spying on Mr. Sidell's private communication. I think, this case highlights the need for businesses to put appropriate measures in place for protecting confidential data, and clearly define the internet monitoring policies. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/technology/27mail.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list FDE@www.xml-dev.com http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
