Leader: Sorry, your work email's an open book

Recently two Prudential employees were sacked from the financial services company's Stirling headquarters after management said they were dealing illegal drugs - amphetamines, cannabis and ecstasy - via email at work. Both workers have denied the charges, which the Scottish police are now investigating.

It seems crazy, doesn't it - dealing drugs from the office? What were they thinking?

It is an extreme example. Yet it reveals how private we still feel email is at work.

We really should know better.

Firms make a point these days of detailing their internet and email monitoring policies in corporate handbooks. The accepted stance is that if you're in an office, working on a computer owned by a company, then that company has the right to read over your emails should it so desire.

Everyone uses some office time - and the company's fat pipe internet connection - to take care of personal business. You send email to friends, book a plane ticket for an upcoming holiday, make a call to your bank.

By and large managers are OK with this, as long as said employees are getting their work done.

The problem starts when this harmonious don't ask/don't tell situation lulls employees into thinking they don't need to exercise their best judgement in deciding how much time they spend on non-work tasks and exactly what those tasks are.

Can anything be done? Could management and HR be more explicit about corporate privacy policies? Perhaps, but bosses may not want to bring up the issue too frequently, as it could lead to extensive debate of activities they don't officially condone but are happy to unofficially overlook.

And chances are it wouldn't do much good either. As long as we all have our own email addresses and inboxes we're going to believe, however wrongfully, that our messages are for our eyes only.

One more story illustrates how even those of us at Silicon Towers can fall into the trap of thinking our email is our own.

Just today a silicon.com employee joked with the IT guy sitting at her computer supposedly fixing a problem: "What's taking so long? Are you reading my email?" He responded: "You think I have to sit at your computer to do that?"

Of course not.