[Bryant Paul]

Company did not assign me and e-mail address. I was using my own sign in to communicate with company on company network. That was fine. Another employee got my e-mail address and went into my personal e-mail without my approval. Information from my private e-mails, non company related were shared internally within the company. I was demoted and subsequently fired for the contents of my personal e-mails. Company admits to this conduct in writing. State is Hawaii. Parent company is in New York.

Thank you

[smoothy]

If this happened on a company owned computer on a company owned network... yes they can. Anything installed on that computer or that transpires on it is considered their business.

Your mistake was using a crappy password or giving it out to anyone... because all email accounts are password protected. How else would they have access to them.

Any emails sent to anyone in the company.. from or to a company computer are company property and considered company business because its assumed they happened on company time and don't require your permission, you agreed to it when you were hired and given access to the corporate network, and a company computer. Its in the fine print.

You were likely an AT-WILL employee... and they don't even need a reason to fire you or demote you... You didn't say how long you were employed there... but I'm assuming it was for a fairly short time.

So basically...there is no entitlement to privacy on a corporate owned computer...They also tracked every website you ever visited while on their network as well. So there might possibly be more to this than you ever knew.

[AK lawyer]

Another employee got my e-mail address and went into my personal e-mail without my approval

OP is unclear how this other employee managed to hack his/her personal e-mail. There might possibly be a claim against the ISP or e-mail host (such as Google or whomever) for violation of the TOS, but I doubt it.

[Fr_Chuck]

If the poster, merely left his email open. The error was using a personal email for company business. ( at best a new account needed to be made)

As a rule, they can look though information being accessed on company computers.

With that said, what was the "bad" things, you wrote that got you fired?

[ScottGem]

What a lot of people fail to realize is that the company network, is company property. ANYTHING done on the company network is subject to review by the company. So it is certainly legal for the company to view any e-mails sent using their network and Internet connection.

But there is an issue of how this other person got into your e-mail. A further explanation of that might give a different perspective.