WSJ Your Money Briefing - How Private Are Your Private Messages to Co-Workers?

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

A recent data breach at Disney that exposed millions of intraoffice messages has shed light on whether direct messages between co-workers can be seen by others. Host J.R. Whalen is joined by the WSJ��s Shara Tibken and Chip Cutter who discuss what employees should know about privacy on apps like Slack and Google Chat, and what rights workers have when it comes to workplace messaging.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash wall street. Here's your money briefing for Friday, September 27th. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. The messages we send on workplace apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat can run the gamut, from official business to personal, private messages, maybe even complaints sent to coworkers.

We've gotten really casual on them. There are always channels for personal conversations and we shouldn't necessarily be treating these as places where we can just say whatever we want. We all should remember that these are work products. They are designed to help us improve our productivity at work. Our personal technology editor, Shara Tipkin, goes over what is and isn't safe to say on a WorkChat app after the break. AI may be the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of processing speed,

and that gets expensive fast. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash wall street. oracle.com slash wall street oracle.com slash wall street a leak of internal workplace messages at Disney has raised privacy questions

about online communication at work Wall Street Journal personal technology editor Shara Tibkin joins me Sh Shara, bring us up to speed. How did hackers get into Disney's Slack messaging app and what kind of data was stolen? They were able to get access to one person's Slack. So that enabled them to see all of the channels and conversations that this person was involved in. This wasn't a hack of Slack itself, but it was more gaining access to this one person's profile. And what they were able to get was a lot of information

going back at least five years. So it was things like computer code, unreleased project details, but then there were also photos of employees' dogs and other personal conversations, which a lot of us do in Slack, Teams, Google Chat, all of these different collaboration messaging software. What does that say about the level of privacy workers often assume that workplace messaging apps like Slack provide? It really shows how comfortable we've gotten with these. Most of us use them in some form to communicate.

Some companies do all of their business on Slack, all of their communications on Slack. Others, maybe it's just checking in about one person or keeping track of one project or whatever it is, but we've gotten really casual on them. There are always channels for personal conversations and we shouldn't necessarily be treating these as places where we can just say whatever we want.

We all should remember that these are work products. They are designed to help us improve our productivity at work and we just need to keep that in mind if we're planning to say anything personal that you really shouldn't be sharing with everyone you work with. And even though the messages at Disney were hacked on a Slack account, we're not singling out Slack. There are other messaging apps that are used by companies, right? Oh, definitely.

Slack is one of them. Microsoft Teams is also extremely popular. Google Chat. This isn't just a consideration for Slack. This is also something for whatever messaging platform that your company uses. So let's say somebody complains about work or their boss and a direct message to a co-worker. Are you saying it might not be fully private? It really kind of depends on what sort of company you're at, the sort of policies, what messaging app your company's using. Generally with these big companies, it's not like your boss can just get a running feed

of your direct messages all day. Usually there are processes in place to be able to get to see any of this in the first place. But one thing to consider is if you're in a regulated industry or facing lawsuits or things like that, your company probably is keeping a backup of everything. So that doesn't just include the public channels, that also includes the private chats, messages you delete, messages you edit, and all of those could come out in like a lawsuit. They could be viewed by your company.

Oh, so deleting your messages won't protect you. It depends. For Slack, for instance, your company could say like, no, I just want to keep the messages that were sent. But they also could decide to keep all of the deleted messages and all of the edited messages. If you say something and you regret it, deleting it right away isn't really going to get you anywhere. So was all non-work chatter off limits on workplace apps? All of the workplace experts I talked to said that it is important for employees to feel like they're part of a company and feel a

sense of culture and to like bond with your colleagues. And now that so many people are working remotely or in hybrid roles, you're not necessarily seeing people in the cafeteria every day. And so it is a way to get to know people, but you should just be really conscious about what it is You're sharing like yes join the dog lovers channel, but don't complain about your boss Don't complain about this project you're doing that you really don't want to do keep those sort of complaints off of your work Software you don't say things like you know when they say people start to look like their dogs. Don't say that I mean unless it's flattering. But what about encrypted apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal? Is privacy guaranteed there? Generally,

yes. They are encrypted, which means what you send basically is gibberish and only the device you send it to can read that gibberish and put it into language that you can understand. However, if you're using those on a work computer, your company could have some other sort of monitoring software. Some regulated industries and a lot of companies don't let you have work-related conversations on those private apps.

Jeff Bezos got in trouble for using Signal because Signal is encrypted, but also it can delete your messages. There have been bankers who've been fired or faced huge fines for chatting on WhatsApp. So because those regulated industries are people being investigated for lawsuits, they have to maintain all records of conversation.

And that includes casual conversations that are work-related. So those have to happen in a way that your work can save them. How does AI factor into workplace messaging? Oh man, AI really helps workers, but it also just makes it a lot easier to keep tabs on what people are doing,

whether it's looking for risk, like, oh, this person is maybe sharing too much information with people they shouldn't, and oh, they're sharing sensitive customer information, or, oh, it looks like employees are all really unhappy right now. AI can sift through a lot of messages and search for keywords or give you like employee sentiment.

But AI is making it a lot easier to see how productive people are and you know, what they're doing with their time. So if you must complain about work or want to say something incendiary about somebody, what's the best way to do it? It is in person, preferably with just one other person that you really trust.

Go get a coffee with your coworker if you need to vent. We all need to vent and complain sometimes. And doing that in a work context also helps you bond with your colleagues who are feeling the same sort of thing. So it's not realistic to say, we're never gonna complain, but we just need to be careful about where and how we're doing it.

All this raises the question, what rights do employees have regarding the privacy of the messages they send on company apps? Chip Cutter covers the workplace for the WSJ, and he joins me now. Chip, before we go, what's the bottom line for workers and their rights on this question. There's not many protections for workers. There are some limitations on what companies can do. For example, they are restricted and looking to see which employees might be looking to organize a union or bargaining, that sort of thing. But for the most part, companies have control here. They're within their rights to surveil their workers and to read what they're sharing on messaging apps, on office chats, Slack, email. It's generally considered a company system, a company tool.

Employers usually disclose to employees that they do have the right to look at this if they want to, but workers do not have a lot of protections here. Our thanks to WSJ's Shara Tibkin and Chip Cutter. And that's it for your money briefing. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly markets wrap up, What's News in Markets. And then we'll be back on Sunday

for the third episode of our new series, Your Money, Your Vote, where we'll examine the presidential candidates plans to tackle student loans and bring down the cost of higher education. This episode was produced by Zoe Culkin. I'm your host, JR Whalen. Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music.

Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening. AI may be the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of processing speed and that gets expensive fast. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI.

OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash wall street, oracle.com slash wall street.