Re: Using Web mail (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc) for Business mails

[Devdas Bhagat <devdas () dvb homelinux org>]

On 16/10/06 06:00 -0000, sfmailsbm () gmail com wrote:
> Dear List,
>
> It is a common practice among users to user their personal email
> accounts like hotmail, gmail, etc to send & receive business (and most
> probably confidential) information
>
> This is particularly the case when users are out of office
It is fairly trivial for the company to offer a webmail service to their
users. Even if it is outsourced, the terms of the contract can be set to
reduce the risk of information disclosure.

Another point to note is that administrators of such sites may stumble
upon corporate information while in the normal course of their duty.
All that it takes is some idiot flagging the message as spam.
If you are using a free webmail, the only hope you have is in the
integrity of those admministrators.

I have had people labelling email from their lawyers as spam, and
landing up in my abuse mailbox. I have to read that email just to ensure
it isn't a complaint, so there is direct disclosure of "secret" 
information.

> These webmails are not under the company's control, and hence there
> is a risk of information loss. However upto now we have not heard of
> any such cases.

This has happened in India (I would have to look up the information
though). In each case, users (managers and software developers) were
sending out confidential information to their next employer/personal
accounts to be able to use it later (to found a new company, to grab old
clients, ...).

Devdas Bhagat

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