CIOs must make sure that employees are given clear policies when it comes to workplace e-mail--what is permissible and what is not, and the risks of violating the rules. It's not only what is written in the e-mails, and it can involve some unexpected activity with serious consequences like snooping through the e-mails of co-workers.

Take the case of a Philadelphia TV news anchor Lawrence Mendte who was criminally charged last month for secretly accessing one work and two personal e-mail accounts of co-anchor Alycia Lane more than 500 times. It is also alleged that he shared private and legal information from the stolen e-mail documents with a reporter from the Philadelphia Daily News.

"I don't think people are of the understanding that this type of conduct is a crime," Scott Christie, a former New Jersey federal prosecutor told Computerworld. "What you're doing when you're accessing e-mail is affirmatively exceeding your access to electronic documents and systems.''

For more on e-mail snooping:
- see this ComputerWorld article