question about web based e-mail accounts and privacy...

[Don]

How secure are web based e-mails (i.e. yahoo, hotmail, etc) with regards to privacy in the workplace?

What I mean is I know my e-mails from my work account via outlook is easily traceable by IT. But what about sending e-mails from say yahoo.ca from work? They can trace that I visited yahoo but can they determine the contents of e-mail read/written from the account? I suppose they can figure out your passwords if they really wanted to?

Thanks
Don

 

[Cobster]

Nope, your perverted emails (via hotmail/yahoo) to Svetlana in Europe are safe from your employers eyes... Carry on...

 

[ShawnBoy]

Actually, if your employer is using a web proxy, they can cache (keep a copy) on their proxy server of everything you browse to, including hotmail and yahoo mail. They also have the ability to retrieve copies of your web based emails from the cache.

Although login credentials are generally encrypted in transit to yahoo and hotmail, it's really not hard for your network admins to get the username/password combination if they want/need to.