Email Paranoia Spreading Quickly

from the they're-reading-you dept

A new study done by Yahoo in the UK says that people are finally getting paranoid about who is reading their email. Many people believe that their IT departments or other colleagues are surreptitiously reading every email they send out, which is making them more cautious about what they write. While it's good to be somewhat thoughtful of these things before sending an email, this does seem a little extreme. Those surveyed are also scared of sending out a personal email that gets passed around. This has happened often enough that it's not completely far-fetched - though, I imagine most people's private-lives are nothing worth passing on via email. Of course, it's no surprise that this study was sponsored by Yahoo, which wants to take the results to explain to people why they shouldn't use work emails for personal items. This is probably good advice, but that doesn't make the actual results of the study any more credible.