If you are using it to forward your work e-mail your employer might not be too happy with you. The trend is for employees to forward their e-mail to free accounts such as Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG), so they can better access their email bypassing the cumbersome security measures of getting into their corporate email.
This is making employers oh so nervous worrying about corporate secrets being leaked or maybe being turned over to the KGB, according to this quote from a NYTimes.com article: “If employees are just forwarding to their Web e-mail, we have no way to know what they are doing on the other end,” said Joe Fantuzzi, chief executive of the information security firm Workshare. “They could do anything they want. They could be giving secrets to the K.G.B.”
It isn't just leaks that have them worried. The legalities involved with federal laws requiring companies to archive corporate mail and be able to turn it over during litigation is being compromised not to mention privacy issues when hospital employees forward their email containing medical information.
The article references an incident where DeKalb Medical Center in Atlanta started monitoring its staff and its use of Web-based e-mail. They found that nurses and doctors routinely forwarded medical records to their personal Web mail accounts. They weren't being malicious they just wanted to be able to continue their work from home.
Another concern is who owns the emails once they reside on a Web mail account? Google states that the e-mail belongs to the user and although it is scanned to look for keywords to place ads on the page they are very careful to ensure no human eyes ever read the mail.
An interesting quote from the article: Paul Kocher, president of the security firm Cryptography Research, said the real issue for companies was trust. “If you can’t trust employees enough to use services like Gmail, they probably shouldn’t be working for you,” he said. I guess it all comes down to trust. There are always ways around security if someone wants to find them.
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