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Big Companies Snoop on Their Workers According to Study

If you like to use your office email for your personal communication, then you better reconsider as a new study shows that about a third of big corporations in the United States and Britain are watching their employees` emails. Companies hire employees to read, monitor, and analyze all outbound email traffic in order to track any legal, financial, or regulatory misconduct. Companies said in a survey that their business has been exposed through leaks of sensitive information due to improper use of company emails.

The study was carried out by California-based Proofpoint in collaboration with Forrester Research. Chief executive over at Proofpoint, Gary Steele, said "What folks are concerned about is confidential or sensitive information that is going out. It is not something that is broadcast," Steele said. "There are organizations where employees think they can say whatever they want to say and nobody is going to read it."

The study covered 406 companies with more than 1,000 employees in the United States and the United Kingdom. 38 percent of the companies are hiring staff to analyze outbound traffic, and 44 percent of all companies with more than 20,000 employees in the U.S. are hiring workers to snoop on other workers` emails.