Who is the rightful owner of your corporate email address?

Yes, indeed. The corporation. There is no sense of property or sense of privacy you can keep from an email sent from a corporation computer, on the corporation time using corporation resources. Most of the time, email policy is clearly dictated within the employee manual. Emails can haunt you down long after you left the company, depending on the corporation's email retention policy.

The email address belongs to the corporate entity that provided it. It behooves the individual to ensure that their private emails go to their private email address, so that there is no separation anxiety at time of a change in employment.

-ASB: http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker

@belldoncolme.net

That is how each of my employee's email addresses end. Those emails are mine. If one of my team leaves my employ, I will take over that email address and my team will follow up on the emails within. There is no personal privacy in those emails.

That said, be very careful that you maintain professional privacy in emails. If your corporate policy puts emails before too many people, you may actually be nullifying attorney/client privilege in the event of a legal action. It has been successfully argued that if a sufficient range of individuals have access to email communication it is by definition already not private or privileged.

Together, let's put the fun back into work!
Belldon Colme
belldoncolme@gmail.com

I agree with the previous posters that the EMAIL address and everything that goes into and out of it belongs to the company. As previously stated, that fact should be clearly stated in the employee manual.

I will add here that this also applies to the company Voice Mail system. I learned this a long time back when a person on my staff left the company I was working for and the telecom group turned over the VM password to me with instructions that I was responsible for following up on the messages. Well damn was I completely shocked at a few of the messages that were in there - lucky that person was gone, I couldn't that person in the face again.

The moral of the story? Duh!

Different countries, different customs? In Germany you got to exclude or limit private useage of corporate email accounts (individual or company-level agreements like "mark private emails with 'private' in the subject or sth). Otherwise it may happen that the company is not allowed to simply access its staffs mailboxes. The employee's right of informational self-determination plus the secrecy of telecommunications law can prohibit this.

I am grateful to all the people who shared their expert opinion and wisdom about this matter. Much appreciated and thanks so much.