Most Americans take their right to privacy for granted, but they often misunderstand the nature of the protection provided to them under the Constitution. Several passages in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (includingthe 4th Amendment which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure) place limits on the government’s legal right to invade your privacy. However, these restrictions do not extend to private entities like corporations– only government. In other words, there are fewer safeguards to prevent your employer from monitoring every move you make on the job.

Employers often engage in passive electronic monitoring of employees. This monitoring frequently infringes on personal privacy. The Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey, conducted in 2005 by the the ePolicy Institute and the American Management Association found that 76 percent of employers monitor workers’ Web connections, while 50 percent store and monitor employees’ computer files.

According to @ZDNet 56% of employers review social profiles of applicants, including#Facebook, #LinkedIn, #Twitter zd.net/wHQOzt”

— PrivacyCast.com (@PrivacyCastCom) January 17, 2012

There are many tools that employers use to monitor the communication and activities of their employees…

• Keystroke Monitoring: software or hardware that captures everything typed, including sensitive data like login credentials for your personal email account.
• Email and IM Monitoring: Every message you send and received is monitored by many companies, and deleting the message often does not remove it from the company’s logs. This includes not only company email, but increasingly personal email and IM communications.
• Telephone Monitoring: Time spent on the telephone is often tracked, as is the phone numbers called, and the conversations themselves are often recorded, Including land-lines, VOIP, and mobile phones. (Regulations on recording conversations vary from state to state.)
• Video Monitoring: A lot of companies record activities using video cameras and CCTV video surveillance in their facilities for security reasons.
• Drug Testing: Large numbers of employers mandate drug testing for all employees or through random selection. The frequency (and career-limiting effects) of false-positives are a deeply concerning side effect of this trend.
• Vehicle Monitoring: Companies which provide company cars/motor pool resources frequently monitor the location of vehicles via GPS tracking.

This site is just getting started, but we will cover all this and more in the coming weeks, so check back!

Keyloggers capture everything you type on your computer, one character at a time. This includes not only that memo you wrote about informing the accounting department that blah blah is now the policy of the whosiwhatsit… but the username and password to your personal Hotmail account.

Keyloggers are generally classified as malware, but there are hardware devices that connect between your keyboard and PC which cannot be detected by anti-malware software.

You should assume everything you type on a company-owned machine can be monitored.

Welcome to Redirective. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Most Americans take their right to privacy for granted, but they often misunderstand the nature of the protection provided to them under the Constitution. Several passages in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (includingthe 4th Amendment which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure) place limits on the government’s legal right to invade your privacy. However, these restrictions do not extend to private entities like corporations– only government. In other words, there are fewer safeguards to prevent your employer from monitoring every move you make on the job.

Employers often engage in passive electronic monitoring of employees. This monitoring frequently infringes on personal privacy. The Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey, conducted in 2005 by the the ePolicy Institute and the American Management Association found that 76 percent of employers monitor workers’ Web connections, while 50 percent store and monitor employees’ computer files.

According to @ZDNet 56% of employers review social profiles of applicants, including#Facebook, #LinkedIn, #Twitter zd.net/wHQOzt”

— PrivacyCast.com (@PrivacyCastCom) January 17, 2012

There are many tools that employers use to monitor the communication and activities of their employees…

• Keystroke Monitoring: software or hardware that captures everything typed, including sensitive data like login credentials for your personal email account.
• Email and IM Monitoring: Every message you send and received is monitored by many companies, and deleting the message often does not remove it from the company’s logs. This includes not only company email, but increasingly personal email and IM communications.
• Telephone Monitoring: Time spent on the telephone is often tracked, as is the phone numbers called, and the conversations themselves are often recorded, Including land-lines, VOIP, and mobile phones. (Regulations on recording conversations vary from state to state.)
• Video Monitoring: A lot of companies record activities using video cameras and CCTV video surveillance in their facilities for security reasons.
• Drug Testing: Large numbers of employers mandate drug testing for all employees or through random selection. The frequency (and career-limiting effects) of false-positives are a deeply concerning side effect of this trend.
• Vehicle Monitoring: Companies which provide company cars/motor pool resources frequently monitor the location of vehicles via GPS tracking.

This site is just getting started, but we will cover all this and more in the coming weeks, so check back!

Keyloggers capture everything you type on your computer, one character at a time. This includes not only that memo you wrote about informing the accounting department that blah blah is now the policy of the whosiwhatsit… but the username and password to your personal Hotmail account.

Keyloggers are generally classified as malware, but there are hardware devices that connect between your keyboard and PC which cannot be detected by anti-malware software.

You should assume everything you type on a company-owned machine can be monitored.

Welcome to Redirective. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Most Americans take their right to privacy for granted, but they often misunderstand the nature of the protection provided to them under the Constitution. Several passages in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (includingthe 4th Amendment which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure) place limits on the government’s legal right to invade your privacy. However, these restrictions do not extend to private entities like corporations– only government. In other words, there are fewer safeguards to prevent your employer from monitoring every move you make on the job.

Employers often engage in passive electronic monitoring of employees. This monitoring frequently infringes on personal privacy. The Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey, conducted in 2005 by the the ePolicy Institute and the American Management Association found that 76 percent of employers monitor workers’ Web connections, while 50 percent store and monitor employees’ computer files.

According to @ZDNet 56% of employers review social profiles of applicants, including#Facebook, #LinkedIn, #Twitter zd.net/wHQOzt”

— PrivacyCast.com (@PrivacyCastCom) January 17, 2012

There are many tools that employers use to monitor the communication and activities of their employees…

• Keystroke Monitoring: software or hardware that captures everything typed, including sensitive data like login credentials for your personal email account.
• Email and IM Monitoring: Every message you send and received is monitored by many companies, and deleting the message often does not remove it from the company’s logs. This includes not only company email, but increasingly personal email and IM communications.
• Telephone Monitoring: Time spent on the telephone is often tracked, as is the phone numbers called, and the conversations themselves are often recorded, Including land-lines, VOIP, and mobile phones. (Regulations on recording conversations vary from state to state.)
• Video Monitoring: A lot of companies record activities using video cameras and CCTV video surveillance in their facilities for security reasons.
• Drug Testing: Large numbers of employers mandate drug testing for all employees or through random selection. The frequency (and career-limiting effects) of false-positives are a deeply concerning side effect of this trend.
• Vehicle Monitoring: Companies which provide company cars/motor pool resources frequently monitor the location of vehicles via GPS tracking.

This site is just getting started, but we will cover all this and more in the coming weeks, so check back!

Keyloggers capture everything you type on your computer, one character at a time. This includes not only that memo you wrote about informing the accounting department that blah blah is now the policy of the whosiwhatsit… but the username and password to your personal Hotmail account.

Keyloggers are generally classified as malware, but there are hardware devices that connect between your keyboard and PC which cannot be detected by anti-malware software.

You should assume everything you type on a company-owned machine can be monitored.

Welcome to Redirective. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!