Can my co-worker check my work email account?

I noticed that a woman I work with has been accessing other employee email accounts. Can she do this? Isn't that against some kind of policy??


**She is not a manager or supervisor - so she does not have this in her job description. But we think she somehow got herself assigned an administrative sign-on without our manager knowing, and that's how she's accessing them. No matter if we change our passwords 10 times a day, with that admin log-on she can hack in at any time!

Can my co-worker check my work email account?
That doesnt matter if you have your own password she cant read your mail.


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Reply:%26gt; Can she do this?





Unless your observational skills are failing you, clearly she can.





%26gt; Isn't that against some kind of policy??





We have no way of knowing what policies are in place at your place of employment.





If you have concerns, then raise them though the right channels in your company - e.g. through your manager or IT support.
Reply:Yes, she is within her rights to check your email, because case law declares that at work there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/04/...





You can use GPG and other forms of encryption to maintain privacy while at work, though.





However, you do want to ask human resources or other managers whether she's authorized to go snooping.
Reply:Depending on where you work and what country you are in, there may be no laws or policy in place to prohibit this. In the US, company computers are company property and you have virtually no right to privacy on them. After all, everything on them is supposed to be company property. The company even has the right to see anything encrypted. Talk to a lawyer for the legal specifics.





Why does she have to be a manager or supervisor to be a company snoop? It may in fact be in her job description to look at all the email accounts. It may also be something that was done in error. Ask a supervisor about it. You could simply be replacing a known enemy with an unknown one.





If she does indeed have administrative access to the email accounts, then there is nothing you can do to prevent her from looking at the email. Also, it isn't really hacking. I have administrative and root access on every computer in my house. That doesn't make me a hacker or even a snoop. It does make me dangerous to my own computers should I make a mistake with administrative privileges. Depending on the system where your email is stored, she may not even have administrative access. It may only be a higher level of read access than you have.





Hacking requires more skills that she probably has. So there is probably a reason she has access even if it is a mistake.





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