OneName Offers Help With Internal Privacy ManagementOneName Offers Help With Internal Privacy Management

PDAs that synchronize with corporate E-mail and Web-enabled wireless phones that give employees access to their work even when they're not in the office have helped make workers more efficient, but possibly at the cost of losing some of their privacy.

OneName Corp., a Seattle software company, is developing a product called XNS (extensible name service), which will allow employees and employers to control the use of information they exchange on the Internet by creating XML-based privacy contracts. For instance, location-based wireless services allow a person's location to be tracked and identified via a wireless device. Employer and employee could develop a contract that specifies that the employee's location will be accessible to the employer between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. only. After that time, "employees could invoke invisibility and sign off of location services for a period of time," says OneName chief technical officer Drummond Reed. Six out of eight OneName customers have expressed an interest in using XNS for internal privacy management, in addition to its intended use of customer identity management, Reed says.

Companies have a lot of leverage over employees where privacy is concerned, says Jason I. Epstein, an E-commerce attorney with Baker, Donelson, Bearman, & Caldwell in Tennessee. But employees can regain some control by establishing parameters on their availability when employment begins, he adds. Employees can refuse to agree to corporate monitoring of their phone, E-mail, and Internet use in the office, but in some states employees also run the risk of losing their job, he says.

"Continued employment can be made contingent upon employees giving up certain privacy rights in the workplace, such as having E-mail monitored if the E-mail is on a corporate account," Epstein says. "If an employee is on company time using company equipment there's a good chance that employer has a right to know what they are doing."