We interviewed you a few years ago about your alarm at how workers were losing their privacy in the digital era. Have things gotten better or worse since then?
It’s much worse, for several reasons, mostly technology-driven. No. 1, GPS. Every cellphone made in America today is GPS-equipped. So it’s easy and cheap for your boss to get the equipment to track you every minute of your private life, without you even knowing it. There’s no law against it. And it’s cheap. For $4 a month, a lot of employers are going to do it.
What’s the most troubling development of the past few years?
Well, there’s cameras. It used to be you had to hire a private detective and spend a lot of money to spy on your employees. Now you can buy the camera on the Internet for $40 and install it yourself. But that’s not really new. What is new is social networking sites. People lose jobs every day because of something completely innocent they posted on their personal Web page. When it happens they’re just stunned — stunned their boss read it, and even more stunned that they can get fired for doing something innocuous.
In your book, you point out that few workers know their company’s policies. How can they find out?
Ask. Very few companies disclose anything about their monitoring policy, but if you ask there’s a reasonably good chance they’ll tell you. And it could make a great deal of difference. Let’s say they monitor e-mail but not instant messages; if you have to send a personal message to your spouse, send it by text. If you know they’re using a keyword filter, you can send a mushy note to your husband using different vocabulary. Kiss is not going to pop up, but some other words will.
In general, should workers assume e-mails are being read?
Yes. It’s foolish to assume your e-mails aren’t being read, because they almost certainly are.