Who owns my email?

[x5x3]

The situation is as follows.

I am a contractor working for company X.

I have an email address [e-mail]

If I send an email from or receive an email to that address - who actually "owns" that email?

The reason I am asking is that I foresee potential legal action at some point in the future. I'm not worried myself due to several layers of companies and contracts etc between company X and myself.

But I can see a situation where emails I have received or sent would be valuable to one or more of the intermediaries I work for.

However company X have a strict no .pst files allowed. So I have rules which forward all sent/received mail onwards.

So I have all the emails I need but it did get me thinking what would happen if I demanded they let me create and maintain a .pst file?

Can they legally refuse?

Thanks in advance.

[deckster]

Company address, company server, company bandwidth. It's their email.

Depending on what's in your contract, they probably have a good claim on any work-related emails that you sent from your private account as well.

[Sheepshanks]

x5x3 said:

However company X have a strict no .pst files allowed. So I have rules which forward all sent/received mail onwards.

Hmmm...Some companies restrict this so you can't forward to popular personal domains, but obviously that's easy to defeat. They may have something in their email policy which did-allows this.

[Bikerjon]

Legally....don't know, but as a contractor are you really in any position to make demands on a client system? I'd say you might be on slightly shaky ground as it is by forwarding all that email to your personal address - would certainly not be allowed in many organisations.

[GreigM]

deckster said:

Company address, company server, company bandwidth. It's their email.

Depending on what's in your contract, they probably have a good claim on any work-related emails that you sent from your private account as well.

This. Forwarding all email to a personal account is a very ill-advised thing to do.

[davepoth]

GreigM said:

This. Forwarding all email to a personal account is a very ill-advised thing to do.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the IT policy the OP signed without reading properly. We've all done it...

[x5x3]

GreigM said:

This. Forwarding all email to a personal account is a very ill-advised thing to do.

please could you expand on why that is the case?

davepoth said:

I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the IT policy the OP signed without reading properly. We've all done it...

There is nothing in my contract about IT Policy and I have not signed anything directly with the end client.

[KrazyIvan]

x5x3 said:

I'm not worried myself due to several layers of companies and contracts etc between company X and myself.

But I can see a situation where emails I have received or sent would be valuable to one or more of the intermediaries I work for.

I don't know why you think this would be a protection. If you have agreed to work for them, you are bound by the company policy that would prevent you from using these emails for your own benefit or that of a rival company.

They will already know your forwarding them on, so I suspect your already in in a bit of a sticky situation.

If your about to-do something very questionable (which it sounds like you are), I would be getting some actual legal advice before you go any further.

[x5x3]

KrazyIvan said:

I don't know why you think this would be a protection. If you have agreed to work for them, you are bound by the company policy that would prevent you from using these emails for your own benefit or that of a rival company.

They will already know your forwarding them on, so I suspect your already in in a bit of a sticky situation.

If your about to-do something very questionable (which it sounds like you are), I would be getting some actual legal advice before you go any further.

I think you are getting the wrong idea. I have sent emails which warn of upcoming issues but were ignored by management that is all.

Unless you are suggesting that is questionable?

[djfaulkner]

Could you print the emails?

[Spitfire2]

GreigM said:

This. Forwarding all email to a personal account is a very ill-advised thing to do.

Agreed. At my place of work there would be a good chance of this leading to disciplinary action these days.

[mikef]

djfaulkner said:

Could you print the emails?

You could print the valuable emails, with all headers (which give a message ID and timestamp to establish authenticity) to individual PDF files and then store those offsite. If you need them in case of dispute, print from the PDFs
I think most contractors these days carry £1M+ of liability insurance, don't they?

[GreigM]

x5x3 said:

There is nothing in my contract about IT Policy and I have not signed anything directly with the end client.

However someone you are working for will have signed something with the end client, and you will be bound by that. You may think the company is doing things incorrectly, but these emails are their intellectual property and you could be landing yourself in significant hot water.

You could very easily be breaching any NDA your client has with the end client and put a lot more people than you in jeopardy. As a contractor you could be in a worse position as you don't have employee safeguards - they could potentially take legal action to recover all monies paid to you if you were effectively working against their interests - I know of 2 cases of this in the contracting world.

As a contractor you have to be Switzerland - keep your head down, do a good job, keep your mouth shut and move on to the next contract. DO NOT get involved inter or intra-company politics for any reason.

[x5x3]

Spitfire2 said:

GreigM said:

This. Forwarding all email to a personal account is a very ill-advised thing to do.

Agreed. At my place of work there would be a good chance of this leading to disciplinary action these days.

The odd thing is that it was a guy in IT who suggested it.... yes I have the email and yes I will print it out.

Without revealing a lot more about the end client it is going to be difficult to discuss further - there are valid reasons for my original question and it would be fair to say their IT policies are a little naive at times.

Thanks to those who responded constructively.