Recent polls have found that more than 60 percent of employees access personal email at work through Webmail accounts such as Gmail and Hotmail.

What many of these employees may or may not know is that, while Webmail account data is stored primarily on the servers of the particular service provider, accessing Webmail at work can cause all sorts of data, including email text, to be saved on the employees’ local, company-owned computers and servers.

As I discussed last week in a blog post on Slack Space, Stengart v. Loving Care Agency Inc. et al., a recent case out of New Jersey, provides a number of cautionary tales for employers who encounter what may be confidential or privileged employee Webmail in the course of internal investigations and electronic discovery.  

However, Stengart should serve equally as a cogent reminder to employees of the potential pitfalls of sending personal email – even through personal Webmail accounts – from work computers. Although the Stengart ruling suggests that an employee may, at the very least in New Jersey, have some expectation of privacy with respect to privileged personal communications saved to work computers, practical realities and common sense continue to dictate that if an employee must make personal, confidential or privileged communications while at work, the best bet may still be to just pick up the phone.