Can an employer open an employees mail ?

The company can only have access to your official mail so it is no problem if they see the need to read it. In some companies all official mails are viewed by the Administrator.  I think employees are sensible enough not to encourage their personal contacts to send mails to their official email.

No I dont I agree,  employer has every right to open and see all the emails in a official email box. As per my perception official email ID should not be used to send personal email. This is to avoid possible information loss. Howwever if no official email ID is provided by the Company, but employee uses his peronal email ID, then emloyer has no right to open and check emails in emailbox. As usual emloyee CC the official mails to reporting Authority

Yes, provided the email ID is provided by the company. in case any employee using his personal ID for business purpose and no ID is provided by the company then it's his personal matter and he may be asked to make CC to the next reporting authority only for the business mails and not for his personal communications. In case if the company opens his personal ID then it's invasion. 

1. The E-Mail IDs given under company domain are for official correspondence. In all company mail domain, it is notified that, company reserves the right to have access to incoming and outgoing mail from your mail ID. Your logging in is assumed as your automatic acceptance of above terms & conditions.

2. The objective of company behind this, is not to evade privacy of employees, but to guard the interests of company against information pilferage. And information secrecy is of vital interest to all companies.

3. This does not mean, company scans each & every mail of personal nature. Mails are checked on specific doubts of some communication od sensitive nature is taking place.

 I think this is fair enough.

4. For personal communication, one can always have personal ID and he can do it after office hours. Company may not have any objection to it. Also it will not have access to you persoanl id.

Mr. Pradip i would agree with you that if the e-mail id is specially for the company's purpose then they have every right to check it out. But as you said if its a personal id then they have not any right to do anything with that as they are crossing the line by getting into the personal space of someone.

Legally, there is no problem with this. Any employer will continue to open mail addressed to an employee unless clearly marked "personal and private". This may be correspondence relating to previous or existing work. There may be requests for further work. It always has been expected that an employer will continue the business after any employee leaves. There is no reason for there to be a different rule when it comes to e-mail. This is not something done secretly. And if its going to be personal employees can use their personal emails instead of official mails.

An employers has the right to check the employee email and he should do it on regular basis so as to check whether the company mail ID is used for blogging, social media as leakage of material financial information, such as unannounced financial results, on blogs and message boards are frequent.

Also check out "Large companies snooping on employees' e-mails"

http://toostep.com/trends/large-companies-snooping-on-employees-e-mails

From the perspective of Indian law, interception of electronic communications can only be done by a statutory authority in accordance with terms set out in the Information Technology Act, 2000. We do not have any privacy laws enacted apart from the provisions under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. In the absence of any legal provisions to check violation of privacy by private entities, the right of an employer to monitor electronic mails of employees constitutes an emerging area of the law that is unsettled at this point in time. The only condition or requirement is that it should not violate any terms and conditions set out in the employment contract.

Although the concept of right of privacy forms an important area of discussion, the employers have several legitimate reasons to consider monitoring employees e-mail and internet usage, including but not limited to confidentiality reasons, maintain employee efficiency and employer’s professional reputation, preventing sexual and other illegal workplace harassment etc.

In today’s business world, corporate houses have set up standard corporate email policies which form the guidelines and rules for email usage created by the company for its employees. The email policy is a set of precautionary measures set out ideally to inform and restrain the employees from making, creating or generating inappropriate and unacceptable email communication. It also lays down the rights of the company in the event an employee breaches the email policy of the company. It should be understood that a company’s email account and internet service that an employee uses is company's property and hence the company has the right to carry out precautionary and remedial measures to protect its security, privacy and credibility so far as it is reflected by its email systems.

[DISCLAIMER: The content provided above is not warranted or guaranteed for any purpose whatsoever and does not constitute legal advice. All negative consequences and liabilities that may result from the usage of the information are hereby specifically disclaimed. Reader is advised to seek professional advice before acting on any information.]

yes, companies can view the emails of employees. The official email id's are for official purpose. But snooping into personal email ids is not right. Employees must understand official emails are for official purposes

yes ... thats y we shd not mix offical and personal mail id's. The mail that u recive on the offical mail id r co's property.