While this answer does not address Pennsylvania precisely, this is an important question that warrants an answer. An employer is permitted to track the computer use of their employees. This is permitted because the computers are property of the employer, not the employee, and the employer has the right to ensure their property is not being used for activities that violate the law, are not permitted under the employee's terms of employment, or present a risk to the employer. These include, but are not limited to: - Personal reasons without the consent of the employer. - Illegal purposes, such as downloading child pornography or sending threatening e-mails. - Unacceptable business practices, such as downloading pornography. - Running a personal business. - Participating in file-sharing services that are down- and up-loading files without the consent of the copyright holder. - Network activity that could indicate the the computer had been hacked by an outside party. - Releasing confidential or secret information to unauthorized persons. Although employers can monitor the computer activity of their employees, it is certainly an unethical business practice to disseminate information on an employee's activities to other employees who are not directly involved in computer security or are not a supervisor of the employee in question, unless it is done to alert them to a potential problem in the organization. Providing information on an employee's computer activities to staff members who have no interest in the activities or the employee is unethical and, in some jurisdictions, could be an invasion of the employee's privacy rights. While employers in Canada are permitted to monitor the computer activities of their employees, they are restricted by federal privacy legislation from certain actions. If an employee has placed personal information on the computer he or she is using and this activity has been done with the consent of the employer, the employer cannot access this information without the employee's permission, unless the employee waives their rights to privacy or otherwise grants the employer access to the information. If the employee is believed to be involved in illegal or illicit activities, for example, the employer can remove the computer from the employee, but cannot inspect the data without due attention to the employee's privacy rights. An employer is, however, free to erase all the data stored on the computer. An employer may require a new employee to explicitly sign a waiver permitting the employer such access or it may be a condition of employment. Always read any documents an employer requests you to sign very carefully to ensure you do not sign anything that could present you with a problem later. An employer may have inserted such a clause in the employee's contract, which is binding on both the employer and the employee. My employer, for example, encourages employees to use the computers assigned to them for skills development and other related personal activities. After the privacy legislation changed, my employer then required all departing employees to sign a form granting the employer the right to access the data on the system. This is done to ensure that any work-related data left on the computer is properly archived in records (corporate 'memory'). If the employee does not grant such permission, the contents of the employee's computer are usually archived without inspection. In both cases the computer's hard drive is erased before it is released to another employee.