> As someone remarked about the US, employers here are legally responsible for > the actions of their employees. I can't tell you any specific circumstances > where companies would decide that it is necessary. I believe that companies > where a lot of employees have Internet access do sometimes put this into > their policy, not to use routinely, but in case they need to investigate a > problem. The key point is that employees must have been told in their > contract that they can be monitored. It cannot be legally done without the > knowledge of the employee in question. Another practical issue is that most IM traffic is encrypted nowadays anyway. You can run vnc to see their actual chat session visually or turn on their chat logging and check the files on the client it but it doesn't sound like it makes for a good work environment... it sounds like the kind of thing they'll be wanting to complain about on IM... Seems to be another good reason not to be employed by a company... http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/06/is_your_boss_reading_your_emai.html -Andy
