Big Brother at work

Before the RIP code, employers were generally pretty careful to monitor emails only where they believed both the sender and the recipient were aware of the possibility that their correspondence wasn't private. But now your company can check your email without consent for various purposes, like recording evidence of business transactions; monitoring standards of training and service or preventing unauthorised use of the computer system.

All sounds quite innocent - but in practice, it covers a multitude of sins. You can sympathise with firms who have ended up paying out millions for racist or sexist emails they have no idea their staff are circulating. (In America, oil firm Chevron stumped up $2.2 million when lawyers looking for dirt in a sexual harassment claim dug up a couple of slightly risque emails.) But again, surely it's possible to put some system in place to monitor dodgy messages like that without trawling through all your personal email?

Though the answer may be yes in theory, in practice employers may want to review all messages at will. In America, over half of all corporate email systems are monitored, and that trend is already on the increase in the UK.