Legal Question in Legal Ethics in Illinois

Re: Email confidentiality:

There is no right of privacy in any email, but especially not a work email. Unfortunately, once you committed your opinion to a writing contained in an email, there was a record of what you said. If your employer had security systems in place that allowed it to monitor and read emails sent on the system (as many companies these days do this), your email could have been discovered by the boss without your colleague showing it. What your co-worker did wasn't very nice, but it does not provide the basis for a cause of action.