Also ratty. I now work somewhere where I have access to sensitive information, including my own. I have also had to recommend the firing of a personal friend. Its to LWs friends credit that she didnt pass on the info to a journalistic colleague who DOES work in that area; its not to LWs credit. But OP gets to choose what they think the coworkers motivations may have been. But what you do when youre on the other side of the inbox? I meant inadvertently as they were confiding in a friend not willfully giving information to the press. So I guess maybe it is a generational thing? Funny story: My mom used to call the bank I worked at where she had an account. Im also miffed by the fact that the coworker kinda blind sided OP. As a sidenote: *Even if* you think it *wasnt* a big deal, when you get hauled into the boss office and told it. So. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. Right. Its always easier, at least to me, to close your mouth than open it. If you cant keep your mouth shut then you need a new line of work. Perhaps something like the announcement of the new Amazon HQ? A further 2 years can be added onto the sentence for aggravated identity theft. A member of the public wants some data, they contact anybody in the agency they can think of, the internal employees bounce it around because somehow they dont know who to send data requests to, and finally it gets to us and we respond. It's really just a 30 . Really? Point isnt that OP doesnt have a right to feel what OP feelsif OP has a sick, gut-punch feeling, thats the truth of how OP is feeling. And even worse when it can have legal implications like for insider trading or government secrecy. Your coworker then followed proper procedure when learning of this data breach- their actions were not ratting you out, their actions were following proper protocol for what an employee who is working at a company that frequently deals with sensitive data is tasked with doing once they learn of a data breach. Even if healthcare providers and business associates are compliant to HIPAA Standards, there is always a possibility of unintentional or accidental disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI). As someone who works in PR/comms, my recommendation is to tell future employers the truth and emphasize what youve learned: i think we often send the message (societally) that making someone feel bad is a mean thing to do; its not. 1) Slack vs text: doesnt matter. In those cases I have to be even more careful, because minor details might get linked to the news story and suddenly its not anonymous any more. Clearly yall do not understand handling confidential information. OP I dont want to pile on, many people have made the point that this would be a very big deal in many industries, and that your coworker was not responsible for your being fired, and indeed may have been obligated to report the violation. If a member of your staff violates this explicit. I work in the auto industry in media communications. [TN] Accidentally emailed very confidential information. What - Reddit And if I tell anyone, including a coworker ,that I processed said claim, my butt could very well get in a lot of trouble. This. Thats crazy (and crazy lucky for the embezzler). Itd be much safer for the LW to ask HR what theyre going to say to other employers asking for references. 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. We see people destroy themselves with guilt, and so we try to tell people theres no need to feel guilty or ashamed. All mom did was hand dad the phone. I reminded him that anything sent in our work email is subject to FOIA and not really completely private from our employer, so if he was going to continue to work against the plan, use personal email. Weve all made mistakes. Yet, the subordinates were not pleased! I was an HR coordinator at a hospital and even though I did not deal with patient records or patients or anything remotely health care-y, I was required to take the annual training and accept compliance as a mandatory part of my employment. Thank you it was getting boring to read everyones outrage. Yet they were fired outright for gross misconduct. Its not about breaking a rule, its about potentially causing some serious issues by leaking information. If OP had confessed to their manager, it would make sense for the manager to say, I have to report this to such-and-such, but the coworker was right not to warn OP. If her friend never told anyone it never would have gotten out. But this was a self-inflicted wound, and you shouldnt frame it otherwise. When we accidentally receive a confidential email from people outside our own organisations, things are a little trickier. Yes. Thanks for sharing all of this. Journalists are very charasmatic and will fish for info its their job. She should have just sat with that feeling and let it fuel her resolve to never share confidential info with an outside party again. Now, hopefully that would never happen, but if you consider reporting serious breaches to be ratting out, narcing or even tattling, your (potential) employers are going to know that you cant be relied on to report when its necessary. You simply let the sender know you've received it by accident, then they can rectify their mistake and you can delete the email. It may be unfair to assume a journalist is cutthroat and would kill for a lead. In a couple of hours, the news agencies were calling the federal government, to verify the news. Why are Suriname, Belize, and Guinea-Bissau classified as "Small Island Developing States"? And while you felt mad at coworker, really youre mad at yourself. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. Dec. 17, 2009 -- You probably don't think twice about sending personal messages through your work e-mail. This is especially true if the employee in question signed a confidentiality agreement prior to starting the job. She was fired for the leak to the single friend, the slack channel thing was a brief misunderstanding but shes annoyed it ever happened. If you cant maintain confidentiality, you can work elsewhere. You could say that, but itd be a lie, which would be an automatic dealbreaker for many potential employers, and theres no guarantee that the previous employer would keep the cause for firing secret. 2. Hows work? There could be Official Reasons, but it could also be something as simple as the coworker, while being made somewhat uncomfortable by this confidence originally, got more and more uncomfortable the more she thought about it. But how do I explain this to show I learnt from my mistake and get a new job. The OPs comment here didnt seem defensive to me at all, and its definitely understandable that the letter was written in the heat of the moment. about your coworker reporting you, betrayed and hard done by, is the way your employer feels about you. Plus, I think part of it was that it was exciting BECAUSE it was secret, and now its apparently common knowledge. Theres a difference between wishing you had a second chance (acknowledges they arent entitled to one) and being upset you didnt have one (expected that there would be one). This is a very important life lesson, both for your professional and personal life. The heads on spikes of the modern workplace. [Well-known bad person] is going to be fined/punished/arrested. And you might know that you trust that friend 100% to keep it confidential but your employer would prefer to make that call themselves, and thought theyd done so when they told you the information couldnt be shared. Of course, its your fault but it is only human to be annoyed with someone, especially someone who seemed to completely misrepresent what happened. I will be in so much trouble if anyone finds out! your blindsided coworker is not required to enter into a cover-up conspiracy with you. Your understanding of confidential is not mine. I actually think your big mistake was telling your coworker, not telling a trusted friend.. At the time, I thought it would be ok since it wouldnt cause a problem, but I realize it was not up to me to make that judgement. And that is a hard pill to swallow, for sure. Second chances arent a foregone conclusion in any aspect of life or work; your expectation that there should have been one at all suggests a level of entitlement that needs to be examined. Same-sex marriage is going to be legalized tomorrow!. It pretty much doesnt matter what field you are in the higher up you go the more likely you are to be privy to information that you MUST NOT share no matter how excited you may be. More commonly it means that you either cant share anything, or you cant share parts that someone could connect to a particular client. You will bounce back! that should be a firing offense. Coworker Dorcus, who used to write down what time the rest of us got in each morning so she could report to our supervisor when the rest of us were late, even though he hadnt asked her to, even though Dorcus had no idea when wed left the night before, how late we were working that day, or what arrangement we had with our supervisor? Yup, landline. The company would have thought everything was hunky dory, but they would have employee on staff who did not understand confidentially requirements. She got paid to pose as Roeders* mistress, once. As others have noted, it probably isnt anything especially exciting. It might just be that the scanners caught it and notified security. Pay secrecy is a workplace policy that prohibits employees from discussing how much money they make. Me too in Government. Im a long time reader posting my first ever comment to tell you that this comment is incredibly condescending, unnecessary, and unhelpful. If you embezzle from the company and tell a coworker who then reports it, the mistake is embezzlement, not telling a coworker about it. And it could be part of the reason why the story was a bit incoherent, too she went from sort of uncomfortable to really, really uncomfortable. While they may not state why someone was fired, Ive found it pretty common to state that someone was fired (or laid off etc) and if the person is eligible for rehire. She shared *exciting* embargoed information. I would feel terrible about it, definitely, and probably think about it for a while after, but ultimately, Id need to prioritize my family and act in a way that would protect my job/salary/health insurance so I could continue to provide for my them. This is a solvable problem. Unfortunately, someone did leak the info so all the employees read about the information in a major business news website AND the local newspaper the night before the event despite the intention for the employees to hear the news firsthand at the event before it was released to the public. We had a discussion on a work committee about not using our work emails when discussing some sensitive information. I can remember almost exactly what I said: It was wrong of me to put that information out. how do I tell employers I was fired for a video I put on YouTube? In jobs that require non-disclosure, active disclosure is a very big deal. Fired. If OP doesnt recognize and own up to that, thats going to be a bigger red flag for potential employers than if OP said, I made a mistake, learned from it, and it wont happen again.. On other occasions, you might accidentally receive a confidential email with information meant for one person (or a few people) you know. @MarkAmery OP said themselves that what they sent was 'client confidential information' but ruled out trade secrets/IP being involved. Shes never even heard any of the names of our clients, except for a couple she met once at an adjunct social function. That may not be the right wordbut Im having trouble finding the right one. I can't remember the details, but there was a point about the fact the word "confidential" added in every e-mail by such a notice wasn't actually helpful, since tools that looked for the word confidential were flagging everything up, including a large number of false positives. I do a lot of trade shows and we always remind booth staff of what to say (talk points) and what not to say to trade journalists. This reminds me of the story of the Apple employee who left a prototype iPhone in a bar by mistake, before the official release. I tell my team that if it leaks from us, they cannot work here. How does this make it any better or worse..? 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. If you are still defensive or dismissive about this, it will come through in an interview. ); Im also thinking of someone I know whose work depends on his being able to drive who got a DUI last year, and someone who essentially had a full emotional breakdown in a workplace I was in when I was a lot younger, who ended up under her desk sobbing and throwing things). The OP was not entitled to be making calls on who outside the org could be trusted with this information. What probably really hurt the OPs case was that the friend is a journalist. How to you ensure you're aware of it, and following it? I work within the tech/analytics field. I have information that I have kept confidential for more than a decade that I know the patients wife does not even know (think undisclosed criminal record). I dont think your coworker ratted you out. It all comes down to the nature of the data you are handling. If you say, My coworker ratted me out, an interviewer hears, My coworker reported my misconduct. Youre the one who comes off looking poorly there, not the coworker. I feel like this misses the overall lesson Allison is trying to impart here. If its obvious who the email was intended for, just forward it on and cc the original sender, letting them know what youve done. I dont know if shell do it again, but Im certainly not going to take the risk on someone who doesnt even seem to be sorry. If it hasnt worked out yet, it isnt the end. Your comment above is much closer to an effective track. There ARE circumstances in which keep this confidential means you can tell very close, trusted people about it as they did in the letter. I dont know the full text of the conversation and I dont want to, but she was probably in a position where she had to tell someone. > On Monday, I was called into a fact-finding meeting with HR. No, not if its classified or embargoed. Loved your opening act for Insolent Children, btw. I didnt agree with it myself, and knew that it wasnt really possible without raising a lot of money, something my organization just isnt that good at doing. I made a similar dumb mistake in my first professional job by sharing something that wasnt sensitive but was nonetheless governed by a broad company-wide confidentiality policy a complaint email sent to our companys contact us address by a customer whose name and address I had omitted. I used to work in a one-industry town. Oh, I wish Id seen this before replying. Let me be clear she did not leak it. Well, you certainly can do that, but its one hell of a risk, and a continuation of poor ethics. Sometimes I see stuff that is cool to nerds of that particular field, but 95% of my Secret Information from clients is not even interesting to them. Rules are there because its so easy to do that thing that feels harmless, and sometimes nobody gets hurt.. Yep. Im sure they thought she was a fruit cake. Since this incident, Ive taken steps like [saving journalist friends as contacts in a different phone, deleting my Slack channel, etc. You are allowed to feel your feels about things, so long as you understand the reality. 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. On the other hand maybe they didnt listen to her or believe her, and in that case shes been fired based on a misunderstanding but that doesnt help her because what she actually did wasnt OK either. Yeah, this is an excellent point. After all, nobody wants to tell their manager that they might (however accidentally) be responsible for a data breach. Everything from whats going to be on sale for Black Friday, to customer financial data.
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