after I resigned, my employer accessed my personal email to find out details about my new job

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
A reader writes:
I recently resigned from a job I have been at for nearly 15 years. The workplace became more and more uncomfortable throughout my tenure, with the boss yelling, the staff miserable, and deadlines being constantly changed. My job, which was more creative in nature, expanded to me doing pretty much everything. Eventually, I decided to start looking and was offered a new job (I used some advice from the site in interviewing and negotiations, so thanks!). I gave three weeks notice, although I was on vacation for one of those weeks.
My boss reacted badly to my resignation, as I thought she would. She tried to counteroffer but I held firm. Then she didn’t want me to tell anyone. I did tell my direct report who was going to take over most of my work but respected my boss’ wishes, even though I thought it was a very bad idea. The boss and second-in-command eventually told everyone the week I was leaving. I was insulted and yelled at for leaving and refusing to give them any info about where I was going. I knew they would find out at some point, but it was not their business. Eventually, as I was leaving on my last day, they demanded an exit interview (which I had been trying to do for weeks). It was a very rushed process, and I gave them all the information that they needed, but without my usual diligence because of the rushed nature.
I started my new job, and all is much better.
I recently needed to find something in my personal email and went to my “sent” folder to find it. While there, I noticed that all the details of my new job (the interview details, references, salary negotiations) had been forwarded to my old boss. Clearly, I did not do this. This was done during normal working hours while I was at my new company.
Nobody should have access to my personal email account. I am guessing that when I gave my former boss a list of important information, I accidentally included my personal email (used occasionally at work by me for work purposes as a favor, like using my Amazon Prime account to order things for the company). I had wiped my work laptop before returning it, so I think the only way they could have accessed it was through having my login information. (Note from Alison: Or they were using a keystroke logger and got it that way.)
The fact that this information was forwarded to my boss but not deleted makes me believe that the second-in-command was the one who did it. My former boss is barely tech savvy enough to sign into his own email, and the second-in-command is a little better but would not think to delete the sent emails.
So I am obviously furious. They have no right to know the personal details of my job. I was already deeply hurt by how I was treated after so many years of an excellent working relationship. Is this illegal? I am considering consulting a lawyer, but I don’t know how easy it would be to prove, although I imagine some tech-savvy person could confirm the IP address of the email access. Also, part of me wants to just let it go and not worry about my old company. On the other hand, this is immoral and egregious behavior, and I feel like they should not get away clean. Any suggestions about what to do?
What the hell .
Yes, sometimes employers are weird about not knowing where a resigning employee is going and do some snooping to try to find out — but that usually means stuff like asking around or looking at the person’s LinkedIn, not illegally breaking into your personal email for details.
And it almost certainly is illegal.
Employers do have a legal right to monitor employees’ use of work email, but they do not have the right to log into your personal email.
From a privacy standpoint, it’s important to note that employers can and do monitor activity occurring on their networks — and with certain monitoring programs, they could be able to see what you do in your personal email from their devices or on their network. Also, if you log into personal email from a work device, your employer’s software could capture your password … but they couldn’t then use that password to go rifling through your personal email account, which is what they apparently did to you.
It’s likely that your employer’s actions violated the Electronic Communication Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act (both federal laws).
And legalities aside, it’s a genuinely outrageous violation of your privacy. It’s not that much different than if they’d shown up at your house and opened some letters from your mailbox, or forced their way inside to check out what you keep in your bureau drawers.
It’s an egregious enough invasion of privacy that you should indeed talk with a lawyer (and because of IP address logging, it shouldn’t be hard to prove at all; a lawyer can help with that piece of it).
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