Legal Question in Technology Law in California
I was terminated as an employee on the last day of March, 2007. Today, May 15th, I was forwarded an email that alarmed me. Apparently my friend mistakenly emailed me at my former work address. This email landed in my former employers in box! Furthermore, my ex employer REPLIED to the email! The email was in turn forwarded to me by my friend. I understand email is a tool and employers have the right to monitor it, but I haven't worked there in over thirty days! This feels like an invasion of my privacy, as well as some form of identity theft (or at least, identity ''misleading). What are my rights?
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: email
You can have an attorney demand that they terminate your email address, but they won't have to if there is a legitimate reason to monitor it. In the future, use a different email address for personal use.
Re: email
How is this different from a situation where an employee takes personal phone calls at work, gets canned, a friend calls the workplace and is told the employee doesn't work there anymore? There are laws -- not very many of them -- that govern a private employer's monitoring of employee email, but do you really believe you have some privacy right in your former email account on a server owned by a business that you don't work for anymore? Look at it from the employer's perspective. Some customer or supplier might email your former employer, in care of yourself, for some legitimate business purpose. Is your former employer supposed to bounce the email, unread?? Who knows, maybe if you hadn't used your employer's email system for your personal email you might still be employed there.
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