Careful with Those E-mails, the Companies Are Watching

When it comes to the enterprises' secrets, employee privacy no longer matters, a study carried out by Proofpoint and Forrester Research suggests.

After interviewing 294 e-mail decision makers and 112 in the UK, analysts have concluded that companies with over 1000 employees read or otherwise analyze outbound e-mails.

For companies with even more employees, over 20,000, the percentage increases to 40% in England and to 44% in the United States.

Both the US and the UK estimate that more than 1 in 5 outgoing e-mails contains content that poses a legal, financial or regulatory risk.

But there is a very interesting difference between the two countries. In the United States, the most common form of non-compliant content is e-mail that contains confidential or proprietary business information. The Brits have a different problem. In their case, the e-mails which violate policies generally have obscene or potentially offensive content.

The Brits' pornography problem is confirmed by another study, which says that the UK is the country with the highest increase in demand for pornographic materials.

Large enterprises don't joke around with those that violate the policies, the same study showing that over the last twelve months, nearly 1 in 3 US and UK companies has terminated an employee for violating e-mail policies.