None taken. As an IT professional, I don't mind (And completely expect people) to use their email for the occasional personal purposes. But most places (including where I work), have a policy you have to sign when hiring stating something to the effect of the company owns the email, can read it at any time, etc. Are we going to constantly read your email? Hell no.. I don't have that kind of time. And we won't without cause (say, you ask us to, HR launches an investigation, court order). But you need to be aware that the potential exists, and in essence, it's not private, as access is not restricted to you only. Unlike ISP email, where you are paying to have the address (in a roundabout way), at work, they're paying you to keep the mailbox.

The lesson here is: Your work email isn't yours. We are constantly re-educating users here at work that the email isn't their personal property. It belongs to the company, and you should be aware of the fact that at any time, without you being aware of it, members of the IT could be reading your email. Generally speaking, we don't unless there is cause (instructed to by Management / HR as part of an investigation, your request, etc) but the possibity exists. I always advise people that if you don't want it shouted across the room for all to hear, don't put it in an email. Corporate email is NOT private, at least not within the company. As for storage, if it's web-based, you in theory have the same problem. An admin for the storage company would be able to access your data etc, in case of file ownership issues, or a court order, etc. The only truly secure way to store your files (and it would be an absolute pain) would be to copy them to an encrypted harddrive, and then physically store that drive in a safe / security deposit box. And that doesn't take into account the possibility of theft / equipment damage.

the reason so many things like 802.11b/g/n, bluetooth, cordless phones, etc are all on the 2.4ghz band is by comparison to other bandwidths, it's largely unregulated, meaning they can do what they want (within reason). Going to 5.8 or 6.0 would be nice, but there are stricter regs on there, and so they can't make / sell features like "extended range" or hi powered antennas, because they're illegal. Until someone manages to invent Wifi over subspace, we're probably screwed.