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Curt Gowan, rev. Jan 2008

Applies with any employer ...and whether you are leaving or not.

No matter where you work, what your job situation, or how aboveboard your activities -- there are serious legal and privacy issues connected with using your employer's IT facilities for your personal business. There are also identity-theft and data-loss risks.

The equipment, the email accounts, the files (and the email and file backup archives -- which may cover years) all legally belong to your employer, not to you.

You must untangle your personal business from your employer's systems.

Note: This is not a theoretical discussion -- and not the typical privacy paranoia from the media.
This is based on personal experiences reported by our members.

You have no legal expectation of privacy or data reliability when you use your employer's IT facilities. (Example: 500,000 Enron employee emails were made public -- and are searchable here: Enron Email Dataset)

Even if you leave on good terms with your employer, your access to company systems and your company email account stop well before your last hour. Cases have been reported where it stopped -- without warning -- on the day before the last day... or even weeks earlier. Assurances from managers have proven to be irrelevant -- your manager does not have control over IT.

Untangling your personal business from your employer's systems takes a couple of months to do.

Files on your company computer

Whether or not you are leaving your employer, make copies of any personal files on your PC, take them home, and use your personally-owned computer for that work.

I know several people who lost their address books, personal contact lists, and personal files (such as the records of a non-profit they worked with) due to their employer unexpectedly collecting their notebook or desktop from them -- or IT, management, or other employees removing equipment from their office in their absence.

Passwords are irrelevant -- by the time they found out, their hard drive had been wiped clean.

Many companies now have the ability to access company PCs and mobile devices remotely. Your data can be wiped while the equipment is still in your physical possession.

Your account on the company email system

If you have any personal correspondence directed to your email account at work, you must change this.

Wherever you work, it is a bad idea to use your company email address for your personal email:

• You run the risk of losing your email connections -- including not only critical ones (like those with financial institutions) but also seemingly-trivial ones that can be a hassle to straighten out, like the public library or Netflix. You can also lose your personal address book.

• An unfortunate email subject line (or sender name) may be visible on your desktop or notebook screen while you are talking to someone or making a presentation.

Even if you don't plan to leave your employer, you should move any personal email activity and directory entries out of your company email account.

What happens when you leave

When leaving, move any personal email activity and address directory entries out of your company email account ASAP.

However you leave, any email autoreply that you set up will be probably be immediately disabled.

People who send you email either receive no reply -- or get a cryptic message passed on by their ISP. Because the reply looks like spam, it might not even reach your correspondent.

Messages to my old work address have yielded this cryptic reply ever since my last day: "Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table"

Some email services -- such as gmail -- don't even forward the rejection note to the sender. Yahoo Mail prefaces the company server's reply with this gratuitous comment: "161.114.21.254 does not like recipient." <smile>

How to switch

You must start now -- this normally takes a couple of months.

If you have time to switch... Once you have your new account set up, you can watch your incoming email and change addresses with businesses and people. After a few months, you will have switched over the stuff you really want.

If you don't have months to switch... Search your email for correspondence related to banking, e-commerce such as Amazon, friends, etc.

If you have any personal correspondence directed to your email account at work, notify the people and businesses you correspond with ASAP. Change account settings for services -- including internal services like for retirees like the purchase discount program.

You must allow time for this -- most such changes require you to confirm by replying to an email sent to your old address.

Getting a private email address

If you do not have home Internet service, you can get a dialup account at from $10 to $25 per month. (I no longer recommend EarthLink. They have been caught losing large quantities of incoming mail -- and their antispam setup is nearly useless.)

If you depend on your DSL or cable provider's email service -- such as @pacbell.net or @comcast.net -- you will probably lose your email address if you move to a new area, which has happened to several members.

Another issue is that ISP-based email addresses don't last forever. This article in the "Houston Chronicle" describes the mess that ensued when the Houston cable franchise was sold: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/silverman/4842611.html

You can get a free advertising-supported email account (accessible via any Internet-connected computer -- whether at work, at home, or at a library) from Yahoo, Hotmail, or Google in a few minutes.

A free Yahoo or Hotmail account may be upgraded to a paid ad-free account at $20 per year. With Google's gmail, you get ads no matter what.

• Yahoo! Mail
• Google Gmail
• Microsoft Hotmail

I would not recommend a free AOL account. Their services have always been adware-infested and generally problematic. Fewer people use AOL, so your friends can't help you. (And using AOL has always branded you as an Internet "newbie" -- not good for high-tech job-hunting.)

If available, I suggest getting a username that incorporates your name -- like john_smith@yahoo.com or john.smith@gmail.com .

Cute email addresses or ones related to your spouse, business, pet, hobby, politics, former employer, age, birthyear, or retired status can be a problem later -- and tend to get wearisome over time. You need a name that will work for many years and that works for both personal and professional use.

If your name is already taken, experiment with your middle name, your initial, or add a word -- something like "john_robert_smith."

Some people use their zipcode as a differentiator, but that's hard for people to remember, a privacy issue -- and a problem if you move.

Using your birth-year as a suffix telegraphs your age.

If you wish, you can have your personal email address forwarded to your email address at your employer. But company email systems often have crude anti-spam mechanisms that reject email newsletters you signed up for -- and you still have the privacy and data-loss issues.

In summary

The issues are real -- this discussion is based on personal experiences reported by our members.

Whether leaving your employer immediately or not, no matter your job situation, no matter how aboveboard your activities -- you must untangle your personal business from your employer's systems.

...and I'm sure that your employer would prefer it too.

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