How to check if your email is redirected or tracked

Question

I am creating a program in which compresses text, which includes normal letters and punctuation and etc. However I have come across a mixed operand Type error of some sort and I do not know how to fix this. I have tried reading other posts about the topic but I cannot understand how it works and how to apply this to my code.

  print("The compression program has started")

  myDict={}
  revDict={}
  sentList=[]
  posList=[]
  num = 0
  sentence = open("pyCompress.txt","r").read().split()


 for word in sentence:
      if word not in myDict:
      myDict[word] = num
      num += 1

 print(sentence)
 print(myDict)

 for k, v in myDict.items():
       revDict[v] = k

 file = open("Positions.txt","w")
 for word in sentence:
            file.write((myDict[word]) + " ")
            file.close()

There is more code beyond these lines

The error I get is: TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'

Solution 1

TL;DR: Yes, your email is probably being monitored. No, it's neither illegal nor unusual for your company to do this. You shouldn't be using work email for egregious non-work uses.

If your email goes through a managed server then there are ways for IT to set up such monitoring processes. They will only be able to monitor your work email address, personal email addresses, so long as they are from an independent third party (such as gmail, yahoo, your personal ISP, etc) would not have this monitoring.

A normal part of a previous job of mine was to sample employee emails to ensure they were abiding by company security policy. It's understood that when you work for a company, the company resources are used at the company's discretion and according to the company's direction. Your email being monitored is neither unusual nor alarming unless you are engaging in behavior detrimental to your company or to your status as their employee.

Solution 2

If you are using a webmail provider (like Gmail) they likely are not tracking you (you may need to check if there is a SSL proxy, but that is another question) if you use something like outlook or some other program running on your machine it would be very easy for your boss to do what you are concerned about.

There is no way to tell without bribing the head of IT with pizza and beer to find out if this is being done.

Comments

[vmonteco]

Could you post the error message please?

[T.Cho]

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'

[Tadhg McDonald-Jensen]

myDict[word] + " " the value of the dict is an int so you need to convert it to a str before adding it: str(myDict[word]) + " "

[Hafiz Temuri]

there is a indentation problem that I can see, try to indent both lines after if word not in myDict: and see if that fixes the problem.

[T.Cho]

@TadhgMcDonald-Jensen I've tried that and it comes up with this ValueError: I/O operation on closed file.

[Admin]

Try to use lowercase and underscores in your variables, it will look nicer.

[Tom Dalton]

That's because you are closing the file after each line-write, but you only open it the first time.

[T.Cho]

@TomDalton How do I solve this? I am quite new to coding so I am not the best at it.

[TheLazyScripter]

Close the file after the loop. not during! or save the data of the file to a list using .readlines() and then loop through that!

[Jonathan DS]

I'd like to suggest to anyone reading that when we give a "legal side" on our answer it is would be interesting to give the country of reference you are using to base your answer, since Stack overflow is a global reference and the law varies even in English speaking countries. I don't think people would be looking into legal advice on SU, but I know for instance that it is illegal to monitor internal company telecommunications (including phone and emails) without prior warning in Brazil and it is generally notified upon hiring a new employee to avoid such legal hindrances

[Ravindra Bawane]

That's a good point. I'm in the US, and every employment position I have taken includes signing some document which includes a section about how all communication on company systems and accounts are monitored or may be.