Time Frame

• If a company's mobile phone provider keeps text messages on record, the company usually has a short period of time to obtain the records before the provider deletes them, so it should make its request for text message copies as soon as possible after messages have been sent. This time frame can vary from days to months. Companies that want to monitor the texts on particular phone numbers can call their providers and request that they keep copies of all pertinent text records. The cell phone provider will charge a company extra fees for this service.
  
  

Expert Opinion

• The Fourth Amendment protects U.S. citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. In City of Ontario v. Quon, Jeff Quon, an employee of the Ontario, California, Police Department, sued the city because his employer viewed the contents of his pager. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his employer had legal grounds to violate his privacy rights, because the City of Ontario had a written policy that allowed it to review text messages and suspected that Quon was using his pager for personal use due to Quon going over his monthly allotted number of texts.
  
  

Privacy

• Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on City of Ontario v. Quon on June 17, 2010, case law for companies requesting text messages and laws on digital privacy is likely to change in the wake of the ruling. Even if employers have a written policy allowing them to snoop on employees using company phones, they should have strong circumstantial or written evidence that an employee has violated company policies in order to obtain copies of text messages, or an employee may have grounds to sue them for damages.
  
  

Private Phones

• Companies can rarely request text records for phones that do not belong to them and cannot force employees to hand over their private information. The only circumstance that allows a company to obtain text messages from another party's phone occurs when the company obtains a court order that forces a phone company to turn over information that contains evidence that proves criminal actions were carried out against the business.