I recently discussed this changing landscape with Jeremy Gruber, legal director at the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J.

What rights do employees have regarding privacy and corporate e-mail? What about using personal e-mail on a corporate computer or accessing corporate e-mail from a personal computer? Employees have virtually no privacy rights on their employer's corporate e-mail system. There is not even a hint of a balancing test involved.

Employers can monitor e-mail on their systems with total abandon and are not required to distinguish between personal and work-related messages. Indeed an employer can monitor your e-mail messages if you are using the corporate system regardless of whether you are accessing the system from home or on the road and can even access e-mail on personal accounts if it is accessed on the employer's server.

In fact, with the exceptions of Connecticut and Delaware, employers are not even legally required to tell their employees they are monitoring. State legislatures and Congress have completely abdicated their responsibility to regulate in this area.

What types of charges have you seen result in the dismissal of employees for using their e-mail? Employees have been dismissed for spending too much time on e-mail, sending "excessive" personal messages and for the content of their messages as well. Employees have been terminated for a single incident.