The key is *personal* e-mail. It's not unreasonable for any
company to assume their e-mail systems are used primarily for
business purposes. The e-mail doesn't indicate it's personal. It
doesn't say, "Your Ghonorrhea test results have come back! Click
here for the results." The e-mail has no contents other than a
link and doesn't indicate that the "Zero Day" promise was made
after this employee left the company. In fact, the subject "Zero
Day" is directly related to SecureWork's business and it's entirely
reasonable to expect a security company to investigate the
contents. I'm actually surprised someone actually monitors these
accounts and took the time to look into it!
On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:28:26 -0400 security curmudgeon
<jericho () attrition org> wrote:
: >>A more ethical company would have sent HDM a polite note
saying that
: the person no longer works there before curiosity got the best
of them.
:
: Does your company do this for all former employee e-mail
accounts?
No. But they also don't continue to accept mail to those accounts
either.
: Let's hope he unsubscribed from all his mailing lists before he
left.
If a company is going to continue monitoring a former employee's
mailbox
(intentionally or via a 'catch all'), that is fine. But when they
specifically act on a personal private mail between someone
outside of
their company and the former employee, they are crossing the line
of
ethical behavior I think. As I said, the least they should have
done is
mail HDM and notified him the person no longer works there. If
they didn't
do that, and if you think they shouldn't be required to, then they
shouldn't act on the information in the mail either.
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