It's the Boss Fooling You -- for Safety's Sake

· Seventy-six percent of organizations monitor employee Web site connections.

· Sixty-five percent use software to block connections.

· Thirty-six percent of employers use technology to track content and/or keystrokes.

· Fifty-five percent retain and review e-mail.

"Employers are increasingly taking monitoring and surveillance seriously, primarily because of legitimate legal liabilities," said Nancy Flynn, executive director of the institute. As of 2006, courts had subpoenaed employee e-mail at 24 percent of companies, and 15 percent of employers had gone to court to battle lawsuits specifically triggered by inappropriate e-mail use, according to a survey by the ePolicy Institute and the AMA. "So it's understandable employers are going to do what they can to try to prevent e-mail gaffes from happening or inappropriate messages from leaving or coming in to the system," Flynn said.

The same survey found that 26 percent of bosses had fired employees for e-mail misuse.

And so it stands to reason that a company phishing its own employees may not be the strangest idea out there. However, studies show that a number of workers still think tactics like these are trampling on their rights.

In a new survey by Littler Mendelson, an employment law firm, and the Ponemon Institute, a technology research firm, 38 percent of workers said they thought their privacy would be violated if their employer viewed their e-mail and Internet access over the corporate intranet.

Flynn thinks the number of employees upset about privacy might decrease if they are better educated about e-mail and Internet policy. While employers are doing a "good job of enforcing, they are dropping the ball when it comes to employee education." In fact, 76 percent of companies have an e-mail policy in place, but only 42 percent have actually put employees through formal training, she said. "You can't expect an untrained workforce to comply with a policy."

Or to understand why they are being watched.

That's what MacDougall and Gould try to explain to employees after their phishing trips. Employees who understand what is being monitored will be more careful about what they do on company time, Flynn said. And they will think twice before they click on that e-mail that promises to make the right stock picks or hand over riches from Africa.

"An educated workforce is much more likely to comply with policy," Flynn said. "If you explain that, most employees relax about monitoring."