Mark Ashton, a Partner at Fox Rothchild’s Exton office, was quoted in a Corporate Counsel article “Take It From Hillary: Issues with Emailing on Office Servers.”

This summary of Ashton’s post is from Fox Rothschild’s web site:

While former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is busy learning from her alleged faux pas of using personal email accounts to conduct U.S. Department of State business, Mark Ashton explains that there are practical takeaways for anyone using an office server for email.

“Perhaps your electronic musings don’t have the importance of communications from the Secretary of State, but you should know that the law is clear,” he says. “You are entitled to no expectation of privacy if you use an office computer to carry your personal email.”

An employer has the right to retain and review emails through accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo or MSN.  Ashton notes that while not every office is actively doing this, it’s generally a function of the server and not driven by office policy.

Ashton explains that if someone is suing you civilly, he or she may try and subpoena your email accounts at home or work, and “there is a reasonable chance that the information will be published.”

Read Ashton’s full article on Corporate Counsel here.

Top photo credit: Secretary Clinton Speaks at U.S. Embassy in Ottawa via photopin (license)