Re: Personal Privacy issues

[jkrueger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

>> If Yahoo owns the server, does it also own the content?  Or do they have a
fiduciary obligation to protect their users?

Yahoo has a very comprehensive privacy policy listed at the following site:
  http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/

They will hand information to your employer if requested via a court order or
subpoena, but they will notify you when/if they do that.

Note that they cannot control whether your employer monitors traffic going
to/from their web servers through a corporate firewall.  Just as your employer
has the ability to monitor email stored on corporate email servers, your
employer could also monitor traffic going to/from Yahoo servers through their
firewall.  Don't assume that just because your using a public email server, your
mail is private.

Additionally, the data on your hard disks, both at home and at work, are subject
to search...  Note the case that occurred in Feb 2000 where Northwest Airlines
seized the home computers of several employees:

http://nl11.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?s_hidethisÒes&p_productÞW&p_themeÞw&p_actionÜearch&p_maxdocsÕ00&p_field_advanced-0Öp_text_advanced-0Ø"20000228021511")&p_perpageÒ5&p_sortÒMD_date:D&xcal_useweights×o

Sharon Hoffman has recently started a series on Electronic Surveillance issues
in the Tech Observatory newsletter, which you can subscribe to at no charge from
www.as400network.com; anyone who is concerned with personal privacy issues
should be monitoring this!

Janet Krueger
Andrews Consulting Group