What are your rights to privacy when you are at work? Unfortunately, the workplace is an area where the individual employee has few rights. Some personal data like employment records are protected by law, but in general, the employer is allowed to monitor employee activity including telephone calls and e-mail and computer use.

Monitoring of employee Internet use is made possible by programs like "Little Brother," a software package similar to those sold for Internet filtering that also logs and reports what web sites are visited, by whom and when.

The best advice for employees is to request that your employer develop clear guidelines for acceptable use of computer equipment and network capabilities, and to ask the employer to reveal whether monitoring is taking place.