A recent survey has found that 35 per cent of large businesses employ staff to read their employee emails.

The research was carried out by Proofpoint, which looked at content security issues and outbound emails, with 30 per cent of respondents claiming they had investigated an email leak of confidential information in the past year.

Other findings include that 18 per cent of companies had investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information from lost or stolen devices in the last 12 months.

A further 22 per cent of employers had fired an employee for breaching email policies over the course of the year.

Over 400 companies from the UK, Germany, the US, France and Australia were interviewed to build up the study which was carried out in March 2008.

The government recently created a new civil offence for people deemed to be "intentionally or recklessly disclosing information".