Last week, 23 people were fired at a New York Times Co. administration unit in Norfolk, Va., for violating the company's e-mail policy. Times spokeswoman Nancy Nielsen declined to comment on specifics of the terminations, citing the matter as an internal corporate affair. Nielsen noted, however, that the New York-based media conglomerate has established policies in place and that the people terminated clearly stepped over the line.

"Twenty-three out of 200 employees—that is a big number," she said. "But it was not for just one e-mail being forwarded. It was for a series of e-mails, a pattern of e-mail abuse."

A Times employee in the Norfolk office reached last week said that the affected employees didn't realize the severity of breaking the company's e-mail policy. But the mass termination sent a clear message to the entire company.

"They were all friends of mine," she said, "but if I say anything, I'll be on that list, too."

Providers of products and services that enable companies to monitor and block inappropriate content say there is now no excuse not to stop anyone who abuses e-mail.

"E-mail, as a technology and as a medium, has been so prolific that there really have been no controls on it," said Jeff Uslan, manager of information protection at the 20th Century Fox Films division of News Corp., in Hollywood. Uslan's company uses MessageInspector from Elron Software Inc. (Nasdaq:ELRNF), of Burlington, Mass., to protect its intellectual property from getting out and to keep spam from getting in.