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Do I Have Any Grounds For Legal Action Against Coworker Or Workplace?

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Location: Illinois

I’m just hoping to get some general advice here as I’ve never been in this situation before. Let me start off by saying, my workplace has never offered workplace emails. So, many people including myself use our personal Gmail accounts for Google docs and Google sheets to keep inventory and make docs for the office. My Gmail account was automatically saved on two computers. I never thought twice about it as multiple people have saved their Gmail accounts as well.

Well, one of my coworkers (call them Vicky) went through my personal Gmail, Google drive, and browser history without my knowledge or permission. Vicky then shared that information with another coworker (Jen). There are multiple witnesses stating that Vicky named a personal document that was in my email and also named a specific search I did at home - as the accounts are connected, what I look up on my phone, it shows up on my account. This also happened to another coworker at the same time.

We both filed a formal complaint and I fear my company will do not anything to this coworker which is completely wrong as she actively clicked on my account and went looking through it all. To clarify, when you open Google chrome on the work computers, it comes to a homepage where you can select who you are. There are the accounts saved and then there is also a guest option. So my name was clicked on intentionally.

I don’t know what she may have screenshotted, saved or copied. I know I shouldn’t have saved my information there but since everyone had done it for a long time, I never expected this to happen. But now the company is turning it on us. And showed us this statement from their codes of conduct, “The corporations computers and network are intended for business use. The corporation has the ability to access and review all information stored on our computer equipment and network and holds the right to perform such inspection at any time, for any reason. Email and IM sent or received on corporation equipment is the property of the corporation. Do not expect privacy for any email (including attachments) sent or received on corporation computer equipment.”

However this was not the corporation, this was an employee. I have looked into filing a police report. And I’ve listed possible damages and what could have leaked as far as medical, financial, and personal information due to emails potentially read/seen. Do I have any grounds to stand on here?

submitted by /u/Pst-TrmtcJessDsrdr
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