Before we delve into the topic, I’d like to remind you that the help desk is here to help you with your most important questions and concerns. We also want to know what is happening in your workplace. Are there technologies in the workplace that concern you? Are certain policies changing the way you work? How is the future of work unfolding at your employer? Tell us and we’ll do our best to dig deeper into your biggest issues.
Now, back to the privacy of your workplace. We spoke with several privacy experts to understand how workers should think about digital communications in the workplace and the services they use. This is what they had to say.
Q: Can my employer see my private messages at work?
A: Privacy experts agree there are two things workers should think about when messaging a colleague. First, is the service you are using provided by your employer? Second, are you having the conversation on a device provided by your employer?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, please be aware that there is a possibility that your employer may be able to view or retrieve your messages. Also, even if you’re using your own device and your own personal account on a digital service, your messages can still be at risk if you have workplace software installed.
“The reality of what’s going on is that a lot of things are changing very quickly,” said Alan Butler, CEO and president of the research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Devices, software and other things are being used… and the responsibility lies with the individual [to understand it all].”
The general rule of thumb is to assume that if your workplace provides you with a tool or device, they can see what you do with it and they will, Butler said. In some cases, that might mean using administrative privileges to read direct messages or private channels in the company’s Slack workspace. It could mean retrieving emails, messages in Microsoft Teams, or texts on mobile devices provided by your company. Or it could mean screenshots of a person’s messages on other services like Facebook, Twitter or Apple’s iMessage that come from the company’s monitoring software.
The issue may become particularly important if workers use messaging apps to rally against unfair working conditions or policies, said Cynthia Khoo, senior associate at Georgetown University’s Center for Privacy and Law Technology.
“There is a standard level of monitoring that has been increasing,” he said. “But there is an additional level of monitoring that is meant to crush labor organizing and activism.”
Even if employers can’t retrieve the messages on your device, they may be able to get metadata to help them determine which employees may have been part of the same conversation, said Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior staff technologist with the American Liberties Union. Civilians. Voice, Privacy and Technology Project. You may also be asked to provide private messages from your private device related to a workplace conversation in an internal investigation, said Edgar Ndjatou, executive director of the nonprofit Workplace Fairness.
“You can decide if you want to honor [the request], but you may be fired for not complying,” he said. “It’s fair game.”
First, if you want to have a private conversation with a colleague, it’s best to do it on your own device using their services, experts say. Also, look for services that provide end-to-end encryption rather than just encrypted messages, Khoo said. End-to-end encryption means that your message will be encrypted from the time before it leaves your device until it reaches the receiving device. Anything less than that means it could be decrypted somewhere in the stream.
He also suggests looking for services that offer ephemeral messaging so that the messages disappear in a certain time. Several experts agree that one of the gold standard services for private messages is Signal. WhatsApp is also a popular alternative, although Khoo notes that users should be aware that it is owned by Facebook.–dad goal, what is widely known for massive data collection.
Gillmor says to think of your digital conversations as in-person conversations, during which the location where those conversations take place is important.
“You wouldn’t go have a conversation outside your boss’s door,” he said. “I would find a more discreet way to do it, maybe when I’m out for a drink or around heavy machinery in a factory.”
It may be best to establish which service workers they will collectively use in person before going online, experts say. That way there is no record of consensus.
But even with the best software, “nothing is foolproof,” said EPIC’s Butler. While Signal allows users to disable screenshots of their conversations, the recipient of the message can always use a second mobile phone to take a photo of a message on the phone where the message was received, he added. And your privacy also depends on who you’re talking to, as you could ultimately deliver any private message regardless of service or device, Gillmor said.
That said, sometimes workers need to bring truth to power, and that may need to happen through company channels. “It would be a shame if everyone just towed the line,” he said.
And some conversations are protected by law. So if someone talks to colleagues about poor workplace conditions and pressures them to respond or take collective action, employers would be breaking labor laws if they retaliated against that, Ndjatou said.
Ndjatou says that in general, the best advice for workplace messaging, regardless of your level of privacy, is to know your audience and use common sense. Anything you say can always be used against you, and if a conversation is particularly touchy, it might be best to go back to the old way of communicating.
“If possible, only meet in person and not digitally,” Khoo said.