1 in 3 Sysadmins Snoop on Co-workers

[Lemur]

Oooh, you IT pros, you're so ... naughty! Unethical! So ... bad! Full of badness! To bursting!

I think a public horsewhipping would be appropriate for anybody with access to the Exchange Server who abuses his position. What say the Orgahs?

U.S. information security company Cyber-Ark surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, and found that one-third admitted to secretly snooping, while 47 percent said they had accessed information that was not relevant to their role.

I note that Slashdot is all over this story as well.

[Husar]

To think those are probably the same guys who get all upset when someone might perhaps be spying on them...

[Whacker]

I'm not surprised in the least, nor should anyone else be. Doesn't make it ethical or right, but just don't be surprised. This is exactly why you educate yo'saelf on personal electronic security. Look into using PGP or GPG for email, use only chat programs and clients that support encryption, be DAMN careful of what sites you browse and be wary of sites that don't encrypt when you login (like the Org.....), don't write down all your passwords on post-it notes that you plaster all over your monitor, etc etc. In this day and age of identity theft it really is Not A Good Idea© to not at least try to learn the basics on ways to protect oneself, at home and at work, because it's not that terribly complicated.

Now go fetch cranky ol' Uncle Whacker his 'cough medicine'. /off soapbox

[Xiahou]

Unethical? Probably, but I also believe it's perfectly legal and I know it happens regularly.

Following up on Whacker's tips, one thing I've taken to doing is using PortableApps to carry applications with me when I'm away from home. Whenever I get online somewhere, I'll connect to my home network using SSH via the PuTTY. With a little configuration, you can configure Firefox and many other applications to tunnel back to your home network over an encrypted connection. Here's a guide on how to do it.

It's not completely full proof- someone could theoretically be monitoring or keylogging the PC you're using, but otherwise it's pretty secure and should protect you from nosy network admins, or even worse, identity thieves who might be monitoring open traffic.