This result stems from the company policy that employee emails were subject to monitoring, and were not confidential. (a very common company policy nowadays).

In fact, many companies monitor EVERYTHING their employees do using company computers and network connections, so even using a private, personal email account from a work computer might essentially waive any attorney-client privilege or confidentiality.

One other caveat, some online email providers and social media sites actually track the contents of messages so they can serve you targeted advertising. The question whether this also breaks the confidentiality of attorney-client communications remains open. This is why I, for one, do not use gmail, facebook, myspace or similar services to communicate with clients about their legal matters.

The only true way to be certain your Internet communicationsare truly secure is to use some form of encryption. Until encrypted email is easier to use, the ‘hassle factor’ prevents it from being widely adopted.