I was under the impression that most big companies had a policy against telling a reference checker anything beyond dates of employment. Companies (and governments) want to carefully manage the messaging and strategy around information that is released in order to bring the biggest buzz and the best information to the public. I arrived in 69. Also to prevent someone who might be a bit dangerous, from hurting you. I wrote back and asked, Is there more context for why your coworker thought that? Rule 1.6 Confidentiality of Information - Comment You can bet Id be gone with no second chance despite my almost-20-years and ton of good work. What happens if an email is sent to the wrong person? : r/gdpr - Reddit She knew about a leak and didnt say anything, who knows what else she is helping to hide, My boss, in a well meaning way and to correct some weird barriers previously put in place by the person before him, told me openly that if Big Boss [aka the owner] asks you anything, just answer him, its all good, you dont need to filter things through me or anything., And I just tilted my head and laughed at him saying Even if you told me differently, I would tell him whatever he wants to know. Which given our relationship he just giggled and responded with of course and thats the way it should be.. LW doesnt seem defensive at all here, and its okay to feel upset while still taking ownership of their actions. OP, its worth examining whether trying to assuage your guilt by sharing this with your mentor, rather than with some outside person who doesnt touch on your industry, was a version of getting post-mortem permission. Email Basics: Email Violations Can Jeopardize Your Job - GCFGlobal.org Where did you go from here? Yes. So this. But it could be that GSA's dad had a code/password to verify it was actually him and the caller forgot to verify that first. I encourage you to spend some time really thinking about this and absorbing the very good feedback you have generally received here. Life may not look better in 6 months but I bet it does in 3 years. Negative emotions are a learning toolfeeling guilty is very uncomfortable, so we dont repeat the behavior that led to the feeling guilty. Plus you might be doing them a massive favour when it comes to catching a data breach early. But when I wrote letters to the llama farmers whose llamas had bitten a client whose story about her life-threatening goat allergy was featured in the papers (obviously this is not what actually happened), I had to be sure I didnt say anything about the llama farmer letters that could link to the goat story. Don't worry, you're still qualified to be Secretary of State. But we have embargoes for a reason. How to get feedback on application rejections sent from a noreply mailbox, Is it bad to answer "Why/how did you get into that job" with "Because I just wanted a job". Assuming OP was correct and journalist friend never would have said anything, OP could have pretended it never happened. The heads on spikes of the modern workplace. It makes the sender aware of their mistake and less likely to bother you again in the future. Click "Enable" if it isn't selected already. If she had been doing something perfectly acceptable, seen by someone who misunderstands the situation, and fired because of that, then she would be an innocent victim of a very unfair employer. If anything went down, you could say But Older Coworker knew! . She probably felt she had a duty to disclose it and she may well have. Yes. But it sounds like it doesnt really matter that HR jumbled the details because neither was a permitted thing to do anyway. Handling confidential information discreetly is a day to day part of working in communications, particularly for government entities (I say as someone in this field). If you dont need to / want to share with the boss share with your closest family/friend, assuming they dont work at the same place or have friends/contacts there. My worry, OP, is that you dont see this as sufficiently serious to warrant a firing but I promise you that in most communications positions, it really likely would be. Better to say in a single instance of poor judgment I let a piece of information get outside of the company to one person which I immediately knew was a mistake and I notified someone in my company. Shouldnt she be in trouble too? and there she would be, going down with you. A recent Harvard Business Review article indicated widespread use in the workplace, with over one third of the US . Can you get fired for a PERSONSAL email accidentally sent to a coworker Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. It could be that she did (and I think no employer should ever fire anyone without hearing their version of the story) but the employer still thought its bad enough that they need to fire OP. reading. Excellent points, especially LWs use of ratted out. Alison has said so many times that theres no tattling in the work world. And I did use Slack on my work computer, and I did interact professionally with some journalists who covered my area over Slack. 2) Multiple people is relevant, but its easy to misunderstand 3rd hand stories. I dont know, I think thats overstating. As a sidenote: *Even if* you think it *wasnt* a big deal, when you get hauled into the boss office and told it. As the other commenter noted, this could have been a very serious offence considering you were working for the government. As much as I love some of my coworkers, Im not taking one of the team. (It also might be notable that you didnt originally mention that your friend was a journalist until I asked about it which makes me think youre underestimating how much that matters.). I disagree. You were wrapped up in a project and yes you messed up but no you didn't mean to. Misdirecting an email can be awkward. ! mode if she told me a general were harassing her, unless making this public is something shed want. It would have been a ticking timebomb for them, and the next time it could have leaked beyond the friend. Similar in IT in my first internship, I had access to about 40,000 social security numbers. He was very good about keeping track of his boundaries, and we got very used to finding ways of being politely interested in how his work was going for him without putting pressure on him about the details. Egress Software Technologies Ltd. Find out what you should do when a misdirected email lands in your inbox. In an ideal world, it doesnt happen at all. She already got that advice from Alison. As soon as someone has decided you're not a team player, or are a problem employee, then even tiny things get seen as evidence that you should be fired. Nothing got out about this before it was supposed to. The awareness that anything sent in your work email is subject to FOIA and open records requests really varies. one last post-script: this person wasnt super good at their job, but was a teammate i worked closely with, and doubt they had been put on a PIP prior to this. Is it illegal to read an e-mail that was accidentally sent to you? YOU know you wouldnt do it again, but nobody else can really know that. ugh, no if you cant tell them the actual news, dont tease it. On the non-security side of things its fascinating to learn what the folks in the booth behind me are working on as Im quietly eating lunch, but its a serious security violation to discuss that kind of thing in public and it makes me cringe so hard when it happens. Yes you can. Was the friend a journalist, or is there something else that would explain why she said that? The reply: Yes, the friend I texted happened to be a journalist but doesnt cover the area that I was working in. Agree with this. That mindset is just so messed up. Everyone makes mistakes at all points in our careers. Everyone messes up. The ex-coworker reached out to me asking if I could send them a copy of the report so they didnt have to start from scratch and repeat the same work they had already done. You've learned from this mistake and had no malicious intent. I am a veteran employee in good standing, but if I shared Material NonPublic Information I learned on the job and was found out, I would be terminated immediately and they would be right to do so. I doubt she is the only person that has ever done anything like this. Discretion and brand protection are as critical to this role as promotion and talking to the media. If I had an employee that did this, Id expect them to be mortified and I would expect to hear how seriously they were going to take embargoes from here on out, and the LWs letter and response are almost the exact opposite. When I finally came clean about it an interview, the response from the hiring manager was thats ridiculous, I would never fire anyone for that.. Ethically, you dont have to do anything. I DEFinitely sometimes shared those tidbits with friends and family who were big tiger/hippo/etc fans. Whether or not you knew about the policy upfront, you need to be ready to discuss steps you take to stay informed about policies and ensure you're following them. Or, maybe they totally overreacted, who knows its impossible to say from here. If that puts it in perspective. Fortunately, I was not fired for the mistake, but my employer did call me on the carpet for a very serious discussion on why we cant share any information that we only have access to because we work there, regardless of how sensitive or not sensitive we think it is on a case-by-case basis. We cannot do our job with our leaders if they cannot trust us. But there was no way we were actually going to get the contract now if they didnt. Received confidential email not for you? | Email DLP | Egress I playfully made a sexual remark about a female coworker. And if it is a part of that, the coworker was obligated to report it! Oh, this is all interesting, and I appreciate all the responses. Yes! Yep, I have a friend whose grandmother was a codebreaker and took loose lips sink ships seriously till her dying day. Me too. The main problem is that 'copying data in a very insecure way to be able to bring those data. Contact the recipient Get in touch with the recipient as soon as you notice the mistake and ask them to delete the email without reading or sharing it. Well, it has been released now, so technically we could. Agreed, that immediately got on my nerves. and that was interestingthey had criticisms I hadnt thought of. If the email involves sensitive information, this could be a serious problem for the people involved. Noooo. Or did you double down on not my fault, not a big deal, and co-worker shouldnt have said anything? The government takes this stuff very very seriously. (I dont know if the OP explicitly said off the record, but its not like journalists dont handle that all the time when people do.). I resent our new hires for setting better work-life boundaries than our company normally has, hairy legs at work, my office sent me a random TV, and more, heres an example of a great cover letter with before and after versions, my employee cant handle even mildly negative feedback, my new coworker is putting fake mistakes in my work so she can tell our boss Im bad at my job, insensitive Diversity Day, how to fire someone who refuses to talk to us, and more, weekend open thread February 25-26, 2023, assistant became abusive when she wasnt invited to a meeting, my coworkers dont check on people who are out sick, and more. Then the stories died down and the pressure with it even though there were still occasional leaks. It was bad. But thats not what happened here. It sucks this happened, and Im sorry that this was the way it all went down. Some seem to imply there is no reason ever to leak information, which isnt true. Her best chance of moving forward and looking as good as possible in an interview is to accept full responsibility and say that she made a mistake and learned from it. I see a lot of people saying that its always wrong to share confidential information with the press, and thats not necessarily true. Accidental disclosure is the unintentional release or sharing of sensitive information. 2 July 2018 at 9:11PM. They may. Not just confidential, but confidential from *journalists*!! If it hasnt worked out yet, it isnt the end. Thank you for pointing this out! OP has been mature about admitting fault, lets not undermine that by implying it was no big deal. Policy change that is a big deal to staff that works on it, but very in the weeds for the general public (regulation is going to be changed in a way that is technically important but at most a medium-sized deal), Fairly real examples that would be much bigger deals: If her friend never told anyone it never would have gotten out. Your former job will probably only verify your employment unless you broke a governmental regulation. Leaking private information in a huge breach, especially if that leak is to a journalist. She would have learned a valuable lesson and still kept her job. But they took confidentiality very seriously, and I signed an extremely ironclad NDA, so I never told anyone any of the interesting tidbits I found out about from working there. In such cases, the employee should be given the benefit of the doubt. This is so true. Acidity of alcohols and basicity of amines, Using indicator constraint with two variables. Depending on their responses it ranged from retraining, to suspension, to immediate dismissal.. Whose to say OP isnt right that the coworker had it out for her? I work for a public universitys PR office and I 100% know Id be fired if I shared info with anyone before pub date. Having said that, as a hiring manager, if you were able to talk to me about how this one-time error in judgment caused a deep shift in thinking and was a critical pivot point in your professional development I would hear you out. We go through training every 6 months, that we should NOT to tell the coworker or customer that we will need to report them. Youll also want to double-check any attachments. There are different levels of confidentiality for different circumstances. Which is not how I would handle things now, but I was a lot younger and in a bad place in my personal life, so. There are, unfortunately, many things I am doomed to not know even though I would really like to find out. quite a lot of people are going to feel as though youre making them an accomplice in your bad behavior. Yeah, Im wondering that too. Like, how did HR and OPs boss come to the conclusion that this information was spread through Slack (!) I think in both cases, part of the concern is this retroactive removal of risk. Its a huge risk that if discovered by the employer would likely result in being blacklisted from the company and if the LW is employed there immediate termination. I work in a field (not government) where some nonpublic is newsworthy but only in the arts and style sections. Fired. Not me. I think if the OP had framed the situation as, how can I get another job after being fired for being a whistleblower after I shared important but unfortunately confidential information with a journalist because the public has a right to know, these comments would be very different. Breaking certain rules in the workplace, whether written or unwritten, may get you fired. This is especially true if the employee in question signed a confidentiality agreement prior to starting the job. Yeah. I might consider you as a candidate who truly gets it in a way that someone who hasnt been tried by fire might not. Everything from whats going to be on sale for Black Friday, to customer financial data. Oh honey UGH you are just the worst. I am trying not to be too harsh but yes you screwed up. I question that there are no details about your Monday meeting with HR here. I was reading the email at home and after reading the first paragraph I exclaimed out loud (so my spouse could hear) Ooooh. Or that might not make a difference on how its interpreted. (Presumably easier to get caught via company comms but doesnt make the leak any different imo). People find new jobs after being fired all the time. Specifics dont matter, but to me, being able to explain you told your friend your employer was about to buy this farm to build a park so they bought the farm so they could raise the price and make a profit would make a huge difference in terms of making the OP aware of the consequences of their actions. He shared it with one person, telling them it was a joke. (Obviously it would have been best not to give her journalist friend the info to begin with.) A terse to non-existent IT policy or one that's full of unexplained jargon can work against a company. We see people destroy themselves with guilt, and so we try to tell people theres no need to feel guilty or ashamed. Is it a HIPAA Violation to Email Patient Names? - HIPAA Journal Oh, dear. This is a very important life lesson, both for your professional and personal life. Im in public relations/global communications. If someone preempts that, theyre not happy about it generally. No, no, no, no, no. Yep, I think its worth LW remembering that while she knew shed never leak anything again, her boss and co-workers dont. And that wasnt even technically confidential. You committed battery. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. Same here. I dont find it understandable that the OP expected a second chance for this, as someone who routinely deals with unclassified-but-FOUO, Confidential, and Secret information, except insofar as I can have sympathy for someone who perhaps didnt understand the gravity of their actions until consequences came down. If its obvious who the email was intended for, just forward it on and cc the original sender, letting them know what youve done. Im pretty sure the information wasnt actually confidential in the legal sense. I guarantee you that somewhere in the company handbook for the Government Agency where you worked there is a paragraph about the obligations of an employee who learns of a data breach. The point of the story is the funny way people behave. Though there are a few that would be exciting. Because I said I wouldnt, I knew there would be consequences if something like your story happened to me, and also because, hows that going to look to a potential future employer that might value confidentiality equally highly? In fact, think of it this way: you put your journalist friend in a situation where she was potentially sitting on a scoop but she actually kept mum to protect you. Monitoring should not be excessive and the employee must know what will and won't be caught, for example, whether personal emails will be read. Is there a solution to add special characters from software and how to do it. Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust.. You added nuance that I hadnt thought about.
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