You know, the sheep of the world are a needy group. Take for example the recent outrage on personal privacy. There is a lot of that going on, people whining about privacy in their day to day lives when they post everything from kid’s birthdays to their daily bowel movements on a series of social media outlets that truly can boggle the mind. It appears the idea of personal privacy is nearly gone except when it is convenient to one group or another. Personal privacy at work, however, is something that can be addressed and should never be expected. If you take the recent issue at Harvard (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/us/harvard-e-mail-search-stuns-faculty-members.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) The issue can be seen one of two ways:
– Either the people complaining do not understand that it is work email and there should be no expectation of any type of privacy, period.
– Or The University did not communicate effectively enough to ensure people knew that there was no expectation of privacy of any type, period.
All other debates are out unless you are in another country (Like France, where even corporate provided email may be considered private and cannot be read). People we outraged over privacy but can we really expect to be private in this electronic world?
A fact many may not be aware of is that SMTP, the mail protocol for sending email on the internet, is usually insecure and bounces on many points between mailstops, allowing each one of those points to read the email. Sorry guys, private email is really only for internal email.
The solution, private email! (Duh)
If someone broke into my work email, they would see a lot of work stuff. That’s just me though.
Why can’t we just communicate expectations and overcome issues like these without childish name calling and poor enterprise decisions?
Trying hard to be neutral here (maybe not succeeding) but it is hard to think like a sheep.
