No. Information that you have deleted from your computer is often available for your employers to monitor. Even though they appear erased, documents and e-mails are often permanently backed up on the office's main computer system. Even worse, deleting personal documents from your work computer may violate the law, depending on what context and for what purpose the content was deleted. Recently, the court held that an employee who used a program designed to clean off the hard drive and permanently erase documents, called a "secure delete" program, before returning a computer to his employer, violated federal hacking laws designed to prevent damage to networked computers. Another held that a worker erasing documents from a company-owned computer after filing a lawsuit against his employer was in essence tampering with important evidence in the case, Before permanently deleting any documents on your work computer, check with an employment lawyer in your area, especially if you have been terminated or contemplate filing a lawsuit against your employer.