E-mail has become the preferred method for communicating with friends and family. It has taken the place of the snail mail (pen and paper) due to the simplicity, cost and virtually immediate delivery. Anything from formal business correspondence with financial calculations to jokes to friends and relatives are being sent via millions of e-mail everyday. We all have sent personal messages through our work e-mail systems but should we have?
Most companies now days have rules on what should be sent via your office e-mail system. You don’t remember seeing or agreeing to those terms? Well it probably was in the fine print or page 54 of your code of conduct statement. Business computers and e-mail systems are suppose to be used exclusively for business purposes yet every day I receive personal e-mails from folks all over the country, originated from their work e-mail systems. In total this adds a substantial burden onto business computer systems and servers. Also due to the critical nature of business transactions, many e-mail systems are backed up daily and so all your personal e-mails on your work e-mail systems are being back up and saved for who knows how long. Would you want your co-workers reading your personal e-mails? Well, if you use your office e-mail system, legally they can because it sits on the company's server which they are responsible to maintain. Beyond that, others may have the right to read your e-mails if say the company is sued and must turn over all e-mails on the company servers.
The ironic part about this is that there really is no reason for this to happen. With the amazing amount of choices for free e-mail services, there is no reason why you should use your company e-mail system to send personal e-mail. Every Road Runner account is given ten e-mail addresses for your family to use. Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, MSN Mail, etc. offer free e-mail addresses and have great capabilities such as on-line address books, spell checking and lots of space. Most of these e-mail system will even store your e-mail on their server so you don’t need to take up space on your work or home computer and your e-mail is available from any Internet connected computer so you don’t need to wait until you are sitting in front of one particular computer to access your e-mails. You can access your e-mail through any web browser.
Most company rules say that no personal use of company equipment should occur but it is often difficult to separate totally your work and home life. Using your office computer to read or send personal e-mail even on these separate e-mail systems uses business resources (your computer, the local area network, the Internet connection) but not nearly as much as send personal e-mails via your company e-mail system. But what if you needed information on a personal e-mail so we can plan what you are going to doafter work? Do you have wait until we get home to read it? What if you are working at home? Does this make up for your use of some personal things you do at work? All of these are questions that many of us need to deal with in this computer age we live.
The best thing we all can do is to keep our work and home lives as separate as possible. A good start is having a separate personal e-mail address and stop send personal e-mails from our work e-mail systems.
Links to articles on this subject:
AroundHawaii Online Coupons! - This month, we feature an exclusive 15% OFF coupon from Jewel or Juice and a FREE 20 oz. Fountain Drink offer from Sugoi's! Download Coupons!
