How does this work then?

Lisa Greenwood, an office administrator at the Department of Children, Schools and Families, posted an anonymous message on the internet at the height of the furore over abuse of the second home allowances.

It was traced to her work email account and the 38-year-old was initially suspended before being fired from her £16,000 post.

The comments were apparently posted at TheyWorkForYou, which is a site run by a charity. So how were the comments traced to Ms Greenwood? Just how closely are we being watched?

Comments

[dewi]

My guess is that they're monitoring web activity on DCSF computers. The alternative -- getting hold of They Work For You's server logs -- is too horrible to contemplate.

[Bishop Hill]

But how would they know that it was a DCSF person posting the comment?

[Ryan Roberts]

She would have been logged on at a DCSF workstation. All it requires then is cross referencing who is logged into which machine and the originating IP of the traffic. A log of an http post to that site at the time the message appears is pretty undeniable evidence.

[Bishop Hill]

Yes, I get that. But when the comment went up, did every government department scan their IP traffic just to see if the comment had been posted up by a civil servant. DCSF is not even Hazel Blears' old department. What made DCSF check their traffic?

[James P]

What's it got to do with her email account?

[Ed Balls]

We can not tolerate people using Civil Service computers to criticise members of government.

[Rich]

"They Work for You" does not, so far as I can see accept "postings". They do refer you to "Write to Them" so you can send an email. Maybe that's what Lisa Greenwood did.

If so, the next thing that happens is that WriteToThem emails the address you gave them to confirm that you want to send the email. If Lisa used her work address that would give her away. It's trivial to scan email logs by sender. Also, the subject would have been "Please confirm that you want to send a message to Hazel Blears MP". She'd then have to click on the confirmation link.

If this is what happened it explains how her work email was involved. Never use your work email for this sort of thing. Or for managing your bank account. Or your PayPal account. Or to buy things with your credit card. I've seen all of these in email logs. Don't do it.

[Jax]

theyworkforyou allows annotations on debates for example, I would wonder if it was something like that?

[Firebird]

Having worked for a big company that did it I would expect all government internet traffic to be logged and checked for things like this. I bet they have filters set up specifically for sites like "They Work for You" to see what employees are posting. Using a work email account or work computer for anything your employer might not like is I'm afraid, very stupid.