Employees

For a corporation, the employees can be a source of spam. They may accidentally reveal email addresses at unsafe locations on the Web in any of the ways mentioned in this chapter.

It is important, therefore, to create a policy for email usage that employees must adhere to. To minimize spam, it should cover guidelines on:

• Limiting the usage of a corporate email address and forbidding private use
• Publishing a corporate email address on the Internet or Usenet
• Posting to mailing lists that are archived without protecting the email addresses

Another risk is that of a rogue employee, who may take an employee directory, a client list, or a collection of email addresses, and sell them. Often, this happens when the employee leaves the organization.

This is a crime in most countries. Unfortunately, it is difficult to detect and harder to prove. A company should protect its customer list and limit access to only those who need to use this information. Ideally, there should be a log of when email lists have been accessed. However, in some industries, such as recruitment, this cannot be easily done.