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Your boss may be watching what you do online.

The idea of a totalitarian government monitoring your every move is probably still the stuff of fiction, but that doesn't mean your boss doesn't have a pretty good idea of your workday habits.

Experts say an abundance of fast-developing new technology is making it cheaper and easier for employers to read your e-mails, check out what you’ve been looking at on the Internet, track where you go with a company car or cell phone and find out when and where you were at work.

“Your employer can find out anything and everything about your life,” said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, which advocates for workers on issues including privacy.

Of course, employers have good reason to want to know whether employees are stealing corporate secrets, sending out sexually harassing e-mails or just goofing off on the job. But experts say many companies are still trying to figure out a balance between monitoring wrongdoing and just plain snooping.

“In the information economy we have incredible new ways to gather data, many of which are very novel, very new, and we’re not entirely clear on what the standards are or should be,” said Trevor Hughes, chief executive of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a trade group whose membership includes big corporations such as Google, Microsoft and American Express.

Hughes said that’s been made even more complicated because the line between work and home increasingly is blurred. For example, many employees might use their personal smart phone to send a work-related e-mail at night, and then use their work computer to send a personal e-mail during the work day.

Employers generally have the right to monitor employee e-mails and other online activity that happens at work, or even on a company cell phone or corporate network, said Lothar Determann, a partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP in Palo Alto, Calif., and author of “Determann’s Field Guide to International Data Privacy Law Compliance.” But they can only do so if they make clear to their employees that workers should have no expectation of privacy.

U.S. laws generally give employers much broader rights to monitor employee activity than in European countries, Determann said. That is raising complications for companies that operate in several countries.

But even in the U.S., Determann said companies risk running into trouble if they overstep their bounds. For example, an employer could use a keystroke tracker to get your password to that personal e-mail account you checked at work, and then use that password to check your account later. But he would recommend against a client doing that because it could violate the rights of the e-mail operator.

Many companies also are grappling with the thorny issue of how much control they have over the work activity people do on their personal cell phone or other device.

“It’s an unsettled area right now,” said Robert Sprague, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming College of Business and an expert on privacy and technology.

Related: Having fewer kids, or none at all, because of the economy?

The idea of asking employees or job candidates for access to personal social media accounts such as Facebook also has caused widespread outcry, and lawmakers in several states have moved to ban such practices.

Employees may be generally aware that their employer could monitor their activities, but Maltby said many people assume that with all that data flying around their individual correspondence won’t be tracked. In reality, he said, people are nosy and anyone from the IT guy to your boss may be tempted to peruse your activities.

To maintain privacy, he recommends sending any personal e-mails or other correspondence from a personal cell phone or device that isn’t connected to your corporate network.

Others say that it’s generally fine to send a few innocuous personal e-mails at work, or check a personal website now and again. But that rant about the CEO that you’re tempted to send your co-worker? Probably not a good idea.

 “If you don’t want your boss to read it, then don’t send the e-mail,” Determann said.

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More than one-third of employers are snooping social networking sites before hiring a candidate.

Attention jobseekers: You probably want to clean up your Twitter feed, lock down your Facebook profile and gussy up your LinkedIn page.

There is a good chance your prospective employer is snooping around about you on social networking sites.

A new survey from CareerBuilder finds that 37 percent of human resource managers are using social networking sites to research potential job candidates, and another 11 percent plan to start.

What’s more, they’re using social media to make hiring decisions.

About one-third of hiring managers who are using social networking sites to screen candidates say they didn’t hire someone because they found something online that raised an issue about the candidate. The most common red flags were inappropriate or provocative photos or information, or something about the candidate drinking or using drugs.

The findings don’t mean you should shutter your social media life completely. A good social strategy could land you a job.

A little less than one-third of respondents said they had found something on social media that caused them to hire the candidate. Those hiring managers said social media gave them a good feel for the candidate’s personality, conveyed a professional image and supported the qualifications they had been given.

CareerBuilder surveyed about 2,000 hiring managers and human resources professionals for the study.

The findings come as more companies are getting aggressive about screening candidates via social networking, even going so far as to demand a candidate’s Facebook password. The state of Maryland recently became the first to ban that practice.

In the CareerBuilder survey, 15 percent of respondents said their employers prohibited using social media to screen candidates.

The issue is coming up with current employees too. A Library of Congress employee recently accused his employer of firing him after learning via Facebook that he was gay.

COMMENTARY

Your privacy is gone, and it's never coming back.

A report that Target accidentally disclosed a teen girl's pregnancy to her father shows the logical extreme to which retailers can take the search for more information about their customers.

This is what happens when you hand the cashier at your local drug store or grocery store any of a zillion plastic reward cards. Sure you get discounts, coupons or cash back. But you also hand over information that allows the retailer to create a complete personality profile based on your shopping habits.

That is what apparently happened to an unidentified high school girl who Target identified as pregnant from her pattern of purchases. According to a story in the New York Times Magazine, the girl's father complained about a mailer sent to her featuring ads for maternity clothing and other items that might be needed by a mother-to be. The father complained to Target about the "error" but soon discovered that Target knew his teenage daughter was pregnant before he did!

In one way there is nothing unethical about Target and other retailers trying to encourage customer loyalty by offering discounts to those willing to scan their card every time they go through the checkout lines. After all, you have to sign up for the card. You have to decide to pull it out whenever the cashier asks if you have a loyalty card. And you are responsible for reading, as I just did for the very first time, the privacy policies of retailers and consumer-product companies such as Dunkin' Donuts, Cabela's, Budweiser and Bayer.

I picked those four since consumers might not necessarily want others to know about their shopping habits when it comes to items like fattening food, weapons, alcoholic beverages or birth control pills. While each company promises to protect your personal information it is not clear that their promotions or rebates might not alert someone else that you like nothing better than a weekend of donuts, firearms, beer and making whoopee. Moreover, there is nothing to prevent the data they have on you from being sold to other companies that might buy them. Nor is it really clear what steps they take to protect your identity or to minimize the accidental release of information.

You don’t have to be paranoid to be concerned that privacy left the building long ago. In an electronic era of credit cards, loyalty cards, online banking and website cookies, information about your shopping and browsing habits moves at the speed of light. As soon as you do anything, someone else knows. Retailers and advertisers might know things about you before your family and closest friends do. And the outfit you trust to protect your data can in the blink of an eye be in the hands of another that you may not.

There is little you can do to prevent this.  Still, retailers owe it to us to do a better job of protecting our privacy. In tough economic times, the vast majority of  consumers will easily sacrifice a bit of privacy to save a few dollars. But as the story of the father, Target and the maternity ads should make very clear, that sacrifice comes at a  price that is poorly understood and can be quite high.

We should not allow our ability to control who knows what about us to be crushed under a mountain of privacy pledges, security policies and confidentiality riders that are not worth the unread websites and disclosure forms they appear on.  If privacy is to have any future in an age of sophisticated marketing and consumer purchase monitoring it will need far more attention from consumers and regulators.

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 Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy  at the University of Pennsylvania.