Can email companies track what computer you've used to sign in on?

worried1234

Not sure if this is the right place, mods please feel free to move!

My company uses their own email setup - so the address would be john.doe@company.ie

I have accidentally signed in on my supervisor's account. I went to sign in on my own laptop at home, and accidentally copied his address instead of mine, pasted it, and as it turns out, we have the same password (we are all given pretty basic passwords, I'm pretty sure half the company probably have the same one).

I didn't read his emails, and logged out as soon as I realised. But now I'm freaking out that he can actually trace what computers have been used to sign into his mail on, and unfortunately my laptop domain is named with my name, so he'd know straight away.

Does anyone know if computers can be traced, or is that a breach of privacy? I'm debating whether to go to him and explain what happened, just in case, but to be honest I don't get along well with him and I have a feeling he won't believe me and he'll bring it up with our boss. It is a pretty ridiculous thing to do, in fairness

Help!

brianwalshcork

Technically yes, Realistically, if the security is as lax as 1/2 the company having the same password, they are unlikely to be monitoring logins.

If you happen to be logging into your supervisors mail every morning for a snoop then I'd be worried, or if there was a string of failed login attempts prior to you eventually guessing the right one, then you might have cause for concern, otherwise you gained access to an account accidentally.

JDxtra

Say nothing. Change your password.

worried1234

brianwalshcork wrote: »

If you happen to be logging into your supervisors mail every morning for a snoop then I'd be worried, or if there was a string of failed login attempts prior to you eventually guessing the right one, then you might have cause for concern, otherwise you gained access to an account accidentally.

As tempting as a snoop is, I'd never risk it! There'd be no failed login attempts, it only happened the once and I got signed in straight away.

Oh dear. So it could actually come up, "this email address was accessed on a laptop entitled Jane Doe"? I'm panicking now ... maybe I will just admit what happened and hope for the best!

JDxtra

It is highly, highly, highly unlikely that somebody is going to check the logs. Especially since they already set your logins to be the same!

System administrators are not likely to spend their spare moments looking through logs like this, unless there is some sort of incident (like a complaint to HR).

My strong advice is to say nothing, change your password, move on.

As said above, I wouldn't worry about it. Logs can be long and boring, no one will be sitting looking through logs unless they have been told to do so.

worried1234

Thanks a million guys. The company doesn't deal with money or big things like that, emails are really just a way of keeping in contact about day to day things, so there probably wouldn't be any need to monitor logins. I'm feeling slightly calmer now!

bridster007

Presuming it Outlook Web Access you logged onto ? Think the only way it would be copped is if his last email was marked as read, that may or may not raise alarm bells for him.
As long as you didn't click into the preview screen then the mail won't have changed to read status. Even if it did, he may just think it was something he did. Depends on the way he set it up and his computer literacy.
Say nothing. Sleep well.

ScumLord

Pretty much everything a server does is recorded in some form, but most It guys don't look at those records unless something goes wrong or they've set up some alert to inform them of certain activity.

But as it's already been pointed out it seems unlikely they've gone to that length given the password issue.

worried1234

Nothing has been said so far... fingers crossed they'll never know!