Your boss may be monitoring your e-mail Personal computers were supposed to liberate the workplace. You should be. Xerox fired 40 people in October for violating company computer policies and Boeing has fired a few on similar grounds too. And surveillance software marketed by companies like Telemate. Net promises even more.
Employers have a legitimate interest in a worker's performance.
Privacy advocates, of course, are up in arms. To do so is a violation of their right to privacy. It's a practice that would be understandable if those calls related directly to your job performance, as they would if you were a telemarketer, but not in too many other industries. It is called a personal computer, after all. Unlike a cop wiretapping your phone, your boss needs no subpoena, no suspicion that you've ever wasted an iota of company time, before reading your e-mail or employing surveillance software to track your Web surfing habits.