The average person does not go to work expecting to have big brother looking over their shoulder when they are using their computer. In this day and age the monitoring of computer usage has become more prevalent than it was in the past. As a computer user you have access to more resources on many computers that are just a few mouse clicks away. With your computer at work you can send emails to the four corners of the earth. Today, you can use the World Wide Web to get look at just about anything you can imagine. This includes pictures, sounds, and video. The desktop computer has become a very powerful tool in today’s workplace. There are downsides to this power too. Because of these downsides employers are finding it necessary to monitor what you are doing on your computer. Does this infringe on your privacy right in the workplace? Do you know what your privacy rights in the workplace are? When you are using your computer at the workplace to access you email your activities may be monitored without your knowledge. Companies are not monitoring what computer users are doing with their email. Do you send email to users on the Internet? Most if not all company Internet activity passes through a firewall. One of the functions of a firewall is to monitor Internet traffic coming into and out of the company’s computer network. If you are sending emails to Internet users your company firewall is monitoring whom it is being sent too and if they respond too you. Employers watch company email because of the possibility to transmit company confidential information (Everett, Wong, Paynter 2004-2005). Employers believe that sending personal emails is a waste of time (Everett, Wong, Paynter 2004-2005). To help alleviate what employers consider abuse of their Internet connection they will monitor their employees. Many times this monitoring infringes on what people think are their