For example, a policy stating that all information stored on the computer is owned by the company should indicate that an employee who saves personal photos on a work laptop might expect that someone at work will likely have access to those photos, especially if the computers share a common server and network. However, this expectation may be reduced due to internal company practices and/or workplace policies. In that decision, the Court found that when a computer is provided to an employee to use, especially to use at home, a certain reasonable expectation of privacy is created. The case in question related to a criminal matter in which an employee’s work computer contained images that violated the Criminal Code, however, the principle extends to employer-provided devices in general. What is an employee’s expectation of privacy with respect to this equipment? While technically owned by the business, the Supreme Court of Canada did confirm in 2012 that employees still have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to a device provided by an employer. With a large percentage of office employees working from home, particularly in light of COVID-19, most of those employees now have laptops they can port to and from the office, and use remotely from home. It is very common for a workplace to provide their employees who work in an office environment with a computer. Work-Provided Computers, Phones and Tablets While it may be tempting to use an instant chat application for workplace gossip, it is best to follow the golden rule: if you wouldn’t share it with your boss voluntarily, it’s probably best saved for a face-to-face conversation. While it is highly unlikely an employer will expend the time and resources necessary to comb through instant message conversations, especially an employer with hundreds or thousands of employees, it is important to remember that they could. Work-Based Social ApplicationsĪccording to a study completed in 2012, approximately 70% of workplaces were making internal use of at least one social media/instant messaging platform, such as Slack, and that number has likely only increased since then. Is this allowed? What kind of privacy rights is an employee entitled to with respect to their computer? Does it matter if the computer is owned by the employer? Below, we will look at what an employer is and isn’t entitled to monitor in Ontario, and what rights employees have in this regard. While great for the transfer of family photos, portable devices simply aren’t suitable for moving confidential information around.The ability of an employer to track an employee’s online activity or even their keystrokes has been around for a few years now, but with more and more people working from home due to COVID-19, employers may be more tempted to use them to monitor employee productivity. While training regarding the dangers of data loss is certainly warranted for any groups that handle confidential information, it is the medium (USB drives, thumb drives – portable storage devices in general) that is flawed. It would be easy to dismiss this as a problem with inattentive civil servants, but that simply is not the case. ![]() Data left on missing drives is a threat, but so is the potential for an employee to introduce a packet sniffer, keyboard logger or some other malicious program to their computer – unknowingly or not. Risks associated with lost USB drives aside, there are still numerous other security measures to be addressed. More recently, in 2017, MAPFRE Life Insurance Company paid a $2.2 million HIPAA breach settlement after a flash drive that contained confidential health information from over 2,200 people was stolen. This news followed a similar announcement in December in which that same department lost a drive holding 5,000 individuals’ personal information. In 2013, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) announced that an employee had lost a portable drive containing the financial and loan information (including names and social insurance numbers) of over half a million Canadians. Take the Canadian Government as a prime example. Like me, you have likely either lost or misplaced those portable devices over time and thought little of it. ![]() Were they completely wiped before leaving your care or simply deleted? Ideally, old USB drives should be shredded, but that rarely happens. These days, you don’t own USB drives, you rent them. Of that total, how many could you easily locate? Three? Maybe four? USB drives are so small, cheap, and replaceable that they have essentially become disposable. How many USB flash and thumb drives have you owned in your life? Counting giveaways from conferences and trade shows, I would estimate my number would be well north of 30.
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