If anyone needed a reminder that electronic communication isn t always private, the recent woes of Tiger Woods are a powerful cautionary tale. Text messages purportedly sent by Woods have been shared by a woman who says she had an affair with the professional golfer.

Those messages were released on the heels of another breach. Last month, the web site wikileaks.org posted what it describes as a half a million text pager intercepts, sent during a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

So what is still private these days? With all of us communicating more each day via email, voicemail, text message, instant message and social networking applications, the stakes for maintaining a secure line between sender and recipient are growing higher.

Find out if your emails, voice messages and texts safe from prying eyes.

Of course, there has been no shortage of incidents illustrating the vulnerability of electronic communication intended for a private audience. The archives of gossip blogs are littered with the stray missives of celebrities and politicians who believed they were communicating only with a mistress or lobbyist.

Now, the question is whether there is any safe haven left. Is any one medium safer than another? SmartMoney looked at nine common forms of communication we engage in these days and asked how private they really are.

Think twice before sending an email that your employer, manager or customers may frown upon. There s a good chance your company is monitoring, retaining and archiving your work emails, says Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a training and consulting firm. In fact, the majority of employers (80%) have written policies in place that govern the use and content of email messages, according to the ePolicy Institute and American Management Association s 2009 Electronic Business Communication Policies & Procedures survey. And those emails you send can cost you your job: this year, 26% of the organizations surveyed fired employees for email abuse.

To be sure, chances are slim that someone at your company actually reads every single email you send. The amount of data generated within a short amount of time is enormous, says Jeffrey Stanton, a professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and author of The Visible Employee. Unless you ve got a serious staff commitment to filter or index that data, there s no point to it. That said, companies in tightly regulated sectors, such as finance or certain federal government agencies, archive everything in case they may need it in court, Stanton says. Nearly a quarter (24%) of the companies surveyed by the AMA and the ePolicy Institute reported that a court or regulatory body had subpoenaed employee email this year.

Privacy rating: Low

Instant messaging at work continues to grow and with it, the chance that a single message can cost you a job. This year, 4% of the employers surveyed by AMA said they have terminated an employee because of an IM. The majority of employers (72%) have installed enterprise IM systems, with which the company can monitor, retain, archive and purge messages, Flynn says.

Privacy rating: Low

As long as they notify employees, companies have the right to monitor and record all phone calls made using the employer s phone system, and that includes the landline you use in the office and any phone calls made using a company-provided cell phone or smart phone. More than half of the employers surveyed by AMA (51%) have a policy in place governing cell phone use and language, and 6% have fired employees for inappropriate cell phone use.

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Privacy rating: Low

Your personal text messages, though off limits to your employer (assuming you are not using a company-provided phone), are only as private as their recipient or anyone with access to your cell phone. And even if you do your best to guard your phone, those messages could be requested as evidence in a court of law. For example, these days it s not uncommon for lawyers to subpoena text messages or text messaging records in divorce proceedings, says Eric Goldman, who teaches Cyberlaw and Intellectual Property at Santa Clara University School of Law. In those cases, you are at the mercy of the judge, who decides whether you have to disclose the text messages, or can keep them private.

Privacy rating: Medium

You are protected, in part, by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which says it is illegal to intercept electronic communications while they re in transit (i.e. phone calls). But what if someone records your conversation? Federal law allows that to happen with the consent of at least one party (which could be the person recording you), and most states have similar laws. Twelve states require the consent of all parties in the conversation. (For some examples, click here What s more, it s getting easier.

Privacy rating: Medium

Your voicemail and email messages are also protected by the ECPA, which says it is illegal to acquire communications while in storage. That said, if you send an email to someone s work email address, it could be retained or archived by the recipient s employer. If that company becomes embroiled in a lawsuit, your messages could be seen, Flynn says.

Privacy rating: Medium

At work, a record could be kept by your employer. At home, you have some protection from the ECPA, which prohibits the government from obtaining the meta data of communication (i.e. phone call or Internet records). Anyone else could obtain those records if they serve a subpoena on the Internet Service Provider or a specific web site you have visited.

Privacy rating: Medium

Blogs, Facebook posts, Tweets or anything you say on any other social medium is public, so watch your words carefully. All of this is starting to play role as evidence in divorce proceedings and other personal litigation, Flynn says. And don t let these companies privacy settings give you a false sense of security. Someone who is your Facebook friend today may not be a real friend two weeks or 10 years from now. Moreover, these companies can quickly change the rules governing which users can see material labeled private. Last week, Facebook changed its privacy settings, rendering once-private photos and personal information visible to the public. Photos attached to the profile of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that once had been labeled private were viewable to nearly anyone. Zuckerberg has since said (in a Facebook status update) that he purposefully set most of [his] content to be open so people could see it.

Privacy rating: Low

What about the most low-tech, arcane communication device you could imagine using these days: the handwritten note? If someone knows it s out there and can make a so-called document discovery request, or subpoena it, then that note is available to any litigant who wants it. Whether they get it will be up to the judge, and what s on that note will play a big role in that decision. (If it contains trade secret information, for example, it may have a higher level of protection.) But if you want to be 100% sure that the information remains private, you ll have to keep the note to yourself.

Privacy rating: Medium