In the last few years, hundreds of discrimination cases have involved e-mail or voice mail communications, Internet access, or other electronic devices. This article discusses issues you should consider if any of your workforce has access to e-mail or the Internet. A big problem that is getting bigger Obviously, e-mail has many advantages as a method of communication. However, there are drawbacks that, if not monitored, can expose your company to liability.
People tend to treat e-mails more as conversations than as formal communications.
Consequently, some would argue that e-mail writers are not as careful about what they say and certainly not as careful about how they say it. E-mail messages hardly ever die, even once they are sent, received, and deleted. Months after the communicators believe the information has been destroyed, most of those messages are still in existence, hiding somewhere on a computer network. Computer forensics specialists are skilled at locating and discovering e-mail files that have been deleted or stored. That case vividly demonstrated that e-mail messages in a company's computer system can be used as evidence in court.