Expert: DebiN - 9/26/2010

Question
QUESTION: My company/employer gives me a Blackberry Curve(Verizon Network) that is synced with my work PC for my work e mails and all my contact information. They pay the monthly Verizon bill for my phone and it is in the company’s name. Can my company/employer read my text messages or gain access to my text messages or emails that come to me directly from my own personal email hotmail account that I send or are sent to my phone? Can the company IT guy who manages all our phones read my text messages and personal hotmail messages? My phone is currently attached to my outlook for work emails so I know that they can access those, but what about my personal hotmail? Thanks!

ANSWER: If your company wanted to, they can read your personal emails. They have the ability through their BES server to read your text messages and any email that comes to your device. Everything goes through their servers. Whether they will do this, is another story. If they allow you to have personal mail accounts on the device (which obviously they do) would typically determine whether or not they have issues with this. If they don't want you to have personal mail on your device, then they can limit that ability. Since they didn't, I doubt that they care and I doubt that your IT guys has the time to read messages. Typically, the BES is used to be able to control sites you go to on the device, remote wipe a device if lost or stolen or the employee leaves the company, limit texts, limit voice, etc. I'm not aware of many companies that actually take the time to just read messages unless they have a reason to suspect harrassment, foul play or something else that is an issue. If you have real suspicions, don't get your hotmail sent to your device.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you so much for replying to my question so quickly! My next question regarding this is, even if I deleted the messages that I sent and that came through, are they able to still access them? What I am wondering is if they can actually see my entire hotmail account, or just the emails that are sent an received. Can my IT guy just go to my inbox and read all the messages in there as well as my sent box? Or are they only viewing what comes in and out, and if I delete the message out of my inbox on my phone AND in my hotmail account or just move to a separate folder, will they be able to view it? Thanks!

Answer
If they were to want to view your messages, they would be viewing them when they came in versus looking at your device, so even if you deleted them, they are still on their server when they came into the mailbox. They can't see your hotmail account, only what came into the device and what went out. Sent is also there, basically, anything that went through the server. But like I said earlier, it's very unlikely that they are viewing anything that you send or receive. They may do a search for certain words like things related to pornography, but other than that, I highly doubt that anyone in IT has the time to read people's messages. Keep in mind that they have to set the server up to do this also and not every IT dept does this.