E-mail snooping becomes business standard

Other e-mail accounts
Personal e-mail addresses such as Yahoo Mail or Hotmail are unlikely to be screened by firms, although any e-mail that is stored on a desktop computer's hard drive, even if later deleted, can be recovered by company techies.

That is what happened at Volterra Semiconductor Corp. FBI agents last month found deleted personal e-mails stored on the desktop computer of a former employee of the Fremont, Calif. chipmaker. The e-mails documented that the employee had sent Volterra's proprietary chip designs to a Taiwanese firm he planned to join, according to the FBI. That ex-employee is being charged with theft and faces up to ten years in prison.

VoIP calls next?
The next frontier is voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, calls, which many companies are adopting because it offers more features and lower costs than conventional analog phone systems.

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Because of their digital nature, VoIP calls or voice mails can be easily stored on hard drives, according to Todd Cadley, a spokesman for data storage vendor EMC Corp., which also offers e-mail monitoring software.

While none of the e-mail vendors allows companies to store and scan VoIP calls for keywords or heightened emotions indicative of a conflict, the technology is expected to be available soon.

"I don't think companies will monitor VoIP calls," Forant said. "But several years ago I wouldn't have thought it necessary to monitor e-mail, either."

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