Bosses may be watching every keystroke

KUSA – With the arrival of new technology, keeping secrets in the workplace, especially from your boss, can be harder than ever.

Major new agencies like The Washington Post and Techworld report that at least one-third of U.S. companies routinely monitor their employees’ personal e-mail.

Advisors in the corporate world openly tell supervisors that “e-mail snooping on workers is a smart strategy,” according to Business Edge.

“Employers can watch everything you do on your P.C. and they can do it without your knowledge and consent,” said David Moll, CEO of Webroot Software.

Boulder-based Webroot created Spysweeper, an anti-virus like program that alerts you when someone, even the boss, is spying.

Spysweeper routinely scans the Internet for new types of spyware.

Moll says a growing number of employers are also using keylogging spyware, like Keylogger, which is for sale through the Internet. It sends along copies of every keystroke, including passwords and e-mail. It even records the exact monitor screens employees are watching.

“It’s pretty incredible what they can do,” said James Reid, a senor threat analyst with Webroot.

Experts say that it is not that employers are necessarily nosy, many have legitimate concerns about employee conduct and lawsuits.

“Are you sending company secrets, customer lists, patent lists?” said Moll.

Some large corporations actually outsource their snooping to security firms that aggressively look for problem employees.

However, many think the watching is going too far.

“Monitoring is, in my mind, excessively pervasive and unwise at this point,” said Professor John Soma with the University of Denver law school.

Soma, who is also a member of the Privacy Foundation, says the snooping can have a negative downside.

“The morale goes down and productivity goes down. So although much of this monitoring can be legal, it is still highly counterproductive and extremely poor management,” he said.

Soma says even though an employee can use anti-snooping software to see if the boss is watching, it might be unwise to do so.

“I would think eventually we’ll see litigation in this area,” said Soma. “Unfortunately, we are, at this point, not in charge of our technology.”

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