What would you do if your boss tracks your mails, keylogs your computer?

Actually it is quite legal for a company to track your movements if you are using company time and/or equipment to do things online. However they are not allowed to share personal information such as credit card data or reply to emails on your behalf. Any time you log into a website you leave a "footprint" which can reflect on the company. Security and image is very important to a company. If you are bothered by being "watched" while online then don't do it. Wait until you get home and use your own computer. Unfortunately this is how things are now.

I think while his bos do have a right to know what he does on work computers it has gone too far with the private information. And if the boss cna see it, so cna others and steal his identity, I think he should find otu about his rights in this regards....and be VERY careful what he puts on public computers in the near future

This will be invading ones privacy. I would be furious if this happened to me. In our work each of us have each his/her own computer and our boss never bothers checking it out or going through it. I think it is very unprofessional to do such a thing in trying to meddle with other peoples stuff. Your friend should have sued him for invasion of privacy.

Wow i think there is some serious privacy invasion there. Unless the company policy is that you should not use the company computer and internet line for anything personal at all. Then i guess everything personal you do online, you can expect your boss to track and know. If you are fine with that, then continue using by all means. this must be quite a small SME. cos i can't imagine anyone talking about credit card numbers of an employee. why would he bring that up in a meeting anyway? how would he bring it up? did he write down the numbers? memorise them? totally weird and bizzare.

I think it is ethical and okay to keep track of where the employees are going on the internet at work and keeping track of that. I have worked at a few places that say they do that. But reading and replying to somebody elses e-mails doesn't seem right. I don't think that is legal. hmmm...it kinda seems that the boss is stepping over the line and his position of power is perhaps going to his head...If my boss was doing this I would probably ask him to stop. I'm sure that wouldn't work so then I would probably eventually quit. Feeling that my privacy was taken away at a place I feel that it shouldn't be threatened, and with the information he has. I'd be afraid what he'd do with it.

I would think if this boss person is responding to e-mails as if he is the original recipient of the e-mail then he is committing fraud. Now if there are rules about personal stuff on work computers then your friend could be breaking the work rules and the boss has a right to know that but he doesn't have a right to be collecting passwords or any other personal information on his employees. The employees may need to all get together and report this jerk to his supervisors before it gets any worse.

it is unethical. we have a right to opur privacy and if he does not want them to use the internet, he should restrict the sites and not put on keyloggers. obviously he has the intention of trying to use the passwords, and the cardnumbers. he is stalking his employees! for goodness sake. i think the employee can charge his boss for this. if this was done to me i will definitely sue him and will have him pay for it.

I think it is unethical to really track every single transaction you do on the net. I think that is simply wrong that every move of the employee is tracked and password gathering is also very unethical of him. I think taking control of the internet like blocking certain sites so as not to distract employees from their work is acceptable but snooping on everything they have is just not unbecoming of a superior. I guess he is just not a good leader at all.

Geez, is this in SINGAPORE? This is definitely NOT ethical and condemnable! I recognize the need for companies to log certain things - such as sites visited and even emails. I think most companies do it though they don't bring the fact out in the open and bray about it like a donkey that has just learned how to fart. But a line has to be drawn somewhere. For instance, passwords for one should not be logged. If your friend made an internet purchase using his credit card, then that might be logged because the system is just logging non-password information - who knows there is a credit card number there? However, all this information should be analyzed only when an employee is suspected of wrong doing. I honestly can't believe his boss would throw around his credit card numbers casually - that is akin to admitting to theft. If his card was misused, that boss should be the first to be hauled in for investigation. And talking about answering emails on his behalf, that is outright sick. Where lies privacy? And did that donkey hire your friend as a staff or non-human robot? Let me get this right - we are talking about a ahgongfren@donkeycompany.com email? If so, then no one can reply to the emails to this account except ahgongfren! What the donkey did here can only be excused if it was an e.g. sales@donkeycompany addressed manned by your friend. Then it is perfectly fine. I think your friend should talk through the issues with his boss and change things for the better. If he doesn't want to do this or if his request for human decency and privacy is rejected, he should start scouting for a new job. He might also call one of the papers to expose this unethical boss - but that would quite possibly break his rice bowl.

If he's responding to emails cc to him, he should also send cc to your friend so there's no double sending of information and that it won't appear to the one where the email originated that something is wrong with their relationship. Aside from that, the boss has no right to know the passwords and even snoop on each and every email which are not his concerns. Your friend must inform the HR regarding this to know his rights. It's like opening a personal mail of somebody else. His being boss is just bounded by their work and not on their personal affairs.

personally i won't use my office email for private stuff. i also won't use my office computer for personal stuff. since the computer belongs to the company, my boss has every right to track my mail or keylog my computer. however, i'd stop at checking on credit card numbers. that is really sensitive information and his boss and no right to record it. key logging per se is not an offence. it just depend on what the person do with the information. if your friend's boss uses his credit card number to buy something, then of course it is illegal. my take on this is your friend's boss is trying to send a message to your friend. maybe he should stop doing personal stuff on office resources. not every boss is like that but maybe your friend's boss doesn't like it. cheers ;p

Actually at work the company has every right to monitor the activities done on their computers. If it is work related or not the boss is privvy to the employees emails as well. Now, were the credit cards his personal card, or expense cards given to him by the company? If it is a personal credit card, the employee does not have to divulge that information to the company. But then again, he is using the companie's computer. A PC is personal if it is yours. At my previous company we were told that our computer usage would be monitored by IT, because we are supposed to be working not doing personal things on the computer. I do not think there is a law to protect an employee who is using the companies computer. A computer at work is a tool used to get your job done, not to be used for personal use. A lot of companies are getting really strict about how their computers are being used. If my boss was to do that to me, there would be nothing I can say or do, because I am a paid employee and must conform to the company policies. I know a company executive who was fired because he was emailing to a co worker love letters. They were able to see his activities at work, and fired him because he was abusing his use on the computer

If my boss do this,i will tell him 'you are no right to do!',i think it's illegal,fortuately my boss don't do at all

I will simply resign...

wow that that sucks. i don't think i could work for a company that does that. i am not on here doing anything like looking for a new job or selling company secrets. but i don't want my boss coming back to me asking me how my son is doing because she read in a email that he was not feeling well. that would really get to me and i would not want to work there

Here in the US, employers do have the right to know what you are doing on their computer equipment. They can, and do, monitor your email usage as well as your Internet usage. But, if anyone were to take private information they came upon while doing that monitoring and either used it or shared it with others, as your friend's boss seems to have done, that is a violation of the law. Not the invasion of privacy, because there is no real expectation of privacy at work, but more of an identity theft or identity violation thing. If I were your friend, if he hasn't done this yet, I would IMMEDIATELY report my credit cards as stolen and get them replaced!! And, then NEVER again use them while on the office computer!!

ahgong,i think it is really inconvenient if the boss check our emails.So for me, i always use my personal mail inbox if i contact with my personal friends,not on work.I don't want anyone to check my private information,including the boss if there are no things on work.of course, we have the public working mail daily. Additional, i will set up a personal login password into my computer.so no one can login into my pc except he get the password.lol good luck