The CEO fired them for deliberate misconduct. Nowhere to hide. Gunn and Myers found out the hard way that E-mail isn't as private as it seems. That's a lesson more American workers are learning as E-mailing skyrockets. By the year 2000, IDC projects that 130 million workers will flood recipients with 2.8 billion such messages daily.
Most experts agree that E-mail has changed the workplace for the better.
It allows some employees to work from home, conduct business after hours and while traveling, and transmit information more efficiently, without the unnecessary chitchat of a phone conversation. The law regarding E-mail is still developing, but so far the courts have held that employers may snoop through workers' electronic missives at will. It's becoming a popular practice. The number of employers at major U.S. firms who say they monitor E-mail has nearly doubled over the past two years to 27 percent in 1999, according to preliminary results of a study by the American Management Association. Employees who have deleted their E-mail are surprised to learn it is not really gone.