can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information

This is a very important life lesson, both for your professional and personal life. Not so here because what she did was wrong, just not quite as bad as the misunderstood version. If it hasnt worked out yet, it isnt the end. When I was a journalist I did not appreciate people giving me tips I couldnt use! If you had the same role in a public company, you could have have been fired because of regulations preventing insider trading. (Im not from the US, and not in government) If I were in OPs place, I would also be upset and feel betrayed. And you did it over company lines. Of course I understand that I broke a rule, and that it was my mistake 100%, and it was no one elses fault. And, of course, some agencies dont have a policy and, when contacted can provided whatever info they feel is relevant. In the worst cases though, businesses can lose clients and employees can lose jobs. You can -and often should convey emotion in your official public statements. In the US, sexual harassment wont merit a police response. That would likely lead to your manager also getting fired (for not firing you in the first place) and also make your entire department/agency look bad to the public (whod be wondering who else still working there has done something similar without getting fired). Within hours, there were writeups on tech blogs about the new iPhone before its official release. Nothing I said contradicts this. And that is a hard pill to swallow, for sure. It was spur of the moment and, as soon as I realized what Id done I circled back to her to clarify that that information was confidential. Can I Get Fired for Private Texts or Email Messages? | Money And while you felt mad at coworker, really youre mad at yourself. I remember the first time (as a teen) that I had something from a volunteer position that I had to keep my mouth shut on. That response will likely impress an employer that she has grown and learned, that she is honest and has some self-awareness, and that she would be worth trusting. And it is so hard! 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. She has to protect her job and reputation as well in the end, she shouldnt have to risk her own job stability due to your choices! 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. While it is possible the line could be actively tapped/monitored by someone else, even if it was an unsecured line it would be reasonable to assume the home phone number on file for GSAs dad would lead to the dad. RIGHT NOW it is totally privileged information and it needs to be treated that way. Yeah, but never let anyone else see it, and absolutely still use code names in case someone does see it. Dont blame your colleague she may have been obligated to report this. Well its possible your coworker just had it out for you, but it sounds more likely that she genuinely misunderstood or that she understood perfectly but thought leaking info to a journalist friend was serious enough to report and then it was your boss who misunderstood the details. It also wasnt illegal to share it, because it was about a program or something that has now publicly been announced, so this doesnt even fall under the criminal aspect brought up in the original comment. Yes. If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. That may not be the right wordbut Im having trouble finding the right one. It still sucks, but its not really personal per se, and perhaps it will help a little bit to think of it that way. I dont know whether you meant it this way, but the co-worker is not untrustworthy for reporting this. He was employed elsewhere within a few weeks. Im pretty sure the information wasnt actually confidential in the legal sense. That said, if this was going to be public anyways, your boss may have been inclined to write you up rather than fire you if you were sufficiently remorseful/petrified/mortified. 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. If the answer is Yes then say that. As a communicator, youre likely to be privy to confidential information on a regular basis during the course of your career, and if that information leaks for any reason, it could have serious repercussions for the organization especially if its a government body. My guess is that the LW was fired for a first offense because they refused to take responsibility for their breach. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been. Thank you. This x 1000 to the comment by ENFP in Texas. FIFTY?! Say I have a friend working on a presidential campaign, and she tells me theres a bunch of debate about the candidates strategy, I have to decide whether to mention that to my colleague who covers the candidate. Or did you double down on not my fault, not a big deal, and co-worker shouldnt have said anything? Im sure the OP will find a new job. But I cant talk about the specifics of that scene. Medical too. Trying to tell the OP otherwise is to minimize the impact of a serious offense. You need to be ready to show that you understand that you have responsibility to understand and comply with policy, and that you're willing to do that. Excellent points, especially LWs use of ratted out. Alison has said so many times that theres no tattling in the work world. These comments seem harsh for the most part. But you see that now I hope. Sent a confidential email to the wrong address? We are not in kindergarten. He was valuable. 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. No work friendship is worth putting my familys financial security on the line. That has an impact on real estate values and could make a government employee excited. I dont love not being able to tell her things (even though we are each others I promise not to tell anybody (but Friend) person), the way we share this information is by forwarding press releases once the information is public. All of that being said, I wish her the best in moving forward and finding another job shell bounce back and be the wiser for it. I mean in the end there is not a lot of reasons to trust either, but demonstrating ongoing cluelessness is not a good way to sell this will never happen again. If its a marketing message, spam, or something that looks entirely unimportant simply delete and move on. While I was working there, I started dating an entertainment journalist who then covered some Marvel projects, and there were definitely things that happened at work which I did not share with him because of my NDA. If you had to process the cool news, it may have been better to process with the mentor instead. This violates workplace compliance and trust. My (unclear) point is that there are some options for OP that extend beyond you can never share anything before its public with anyone ever and completely change career tracks.. Im not saying the employer didnt do these things or even if they didnt that its anybodys fault other than LW that this happened, but its a good way to stop situations like this before they happen. Box-ticking SA&T wont change security behaviors. All people, of all ages, are capable of errors in judgment. You are disappointed you didnt get a second chance. You can do this, if you keep working hard on yourself. I hope you find something good soon and can put this behind you. Its going to be a hurdle. December 15, 2009, 1:05 PM. OP should be counting their blessings they only got fired and be upset with themselves for making such an obvious and preventable error, not expecting a large bureaucracy to break its own rules to accommodate them. Sorry if this sounds like nitpicking, Im only pushing because, as PollyQ said, if OP uses this as a reason and her former employer tells a prospective employer the reasons for her termination, it will appear that she was lying and make her look untrustworthy. +1 on the choice of language and framing. Its no more blind-siding because the coworker reported the issue, than it would be if, say, IT had reported it after monitoring OPs traffic. I dont know the OPs financial status but if she needed the $$$ its not that easy to look at it as a kindness in the moment. The consequences are serious and could have legal implications if youre representing a government or publicly traded company. Dont disagree feelings arent wrong but the way we think about them often is. And then they did it again. Doesnt matter that its your friend or that you trust her, its still a huge liability. This technique requires extra steps, but it . so that youre ready the next time it happens at your next job. Access rules are very, very strict, and there are reminders all the time. Where did you go from here? How exciting! and I started reading the details from the email out loud to him. Exactly this. AND I told somebody within the company about that? I understand the issue had to be reported, but why this way ? but if you mess up and by the skin of your teeth get away with it, just DO NOT talk about it with anyone at the company. Things You Didn't Know Could Get You Fired - Investopedia Granted, it was to your older co-worker rather than your boss, but that still shows you felt uncomfortable with your actions. Im not sure you can conclude that it was publically disclosable. Later the coworker left the company and at company B was asked to write a similar report for the new company. She already got that advice from Alison. It sucks this happened, and Im sorry that this was the way it all went down. 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. But folks with strong confidentiality duties often dont disclose the confidential parts of the information to their trusted confidants or partners. Of course. Or at least, feeling like one should have been possible. 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. Organisations can set up static rules (for example, you can send emails to business A but not business B), but these traditional methods are rigid and unreliable. For me, that was it. And I told Mom, so so so many times that I didnt build it myself! How to Handle the Dreaded 'Reply All Moment' - New York Times We also got early warning that legislators were encouraged to resign, a day or two before the press releases. I know it isnt the actual incident since the details dont match (no twitter or cake pictures mentioned in OPs case), but I was assuming it was something like the NASA gravitational waves thing. I think also this illustrates how hard confidentiality is; these are trained and likely reasonably experienced people who still couldnt resist this temptation. All this said, I think Alisons approach is the best one when youre applying for jobs. Instead, youre better off with something like, The truth is, I was fired. This is a tough lesson to learn. But I dont think it helps OP to feed a narrative that prevents OP from owning the situation going forward. I was fired for technically breaking a rule but it was my first offense, and nothing bad actually happened, and Im definitely learned my lesson. Like, firing on the spot if I access my own chart. I agree. Its also something that happens in a business relationship rather than a personal one, because the assumption is that personal relationships are entirely off the record. Once you do it, the consequences are the consequences. Whether nor not anyone got fired might depend on context, but somebody would at the very least get a serious talking-to. Similar in IT in my first internship, I had access to about 40,000 social security numbers. As others have noted, it probably isnt anything especially exciting. This was a Friday. Coworker Jean who would CC her boss and her grandboss when Jean thought shed caught somebody in an errorbut would then cease CCing once she realized that there was in fact no error? I tell my team that if it leaks from us, they cannot work here. Yeah, seconding this. In an ideal world, it doesnt happen at all. Yep. Period. I wrote back and asked, Is there more context for why your coworker thought that? In "Labs," scroll down to "Undo Send" and enable it. The coworker could have totally done the right thing and the LW would still have a right to be annoyed and hurt by the action. Confiding in an older mentor in the expectation of confession-like confidentiality? Age is hardly an indicator of a persons ability to consistently make the best choices at all times. I know this is pedantic, but as someone raised by a mother with BPD, I feel like its important to say that no ones feelings are wrong. And off the record requests from journalists arent mandated by law. Here's how you fix that horrible email blunder on the job - New York Post There are no legal ramifications or civil lawsuits at this stage as it wasn't trade secrets or secret IP. Dealing with an employee suspected of revealing confidential information I had friends who would jokingly-semi-serious ask me if I was poking around their accounts and such while I was working there and I would deadpan look at them and say your finances and personal information isnt interesting enough to lose my job over and then change the subject. Yeah, its like that line from Horton Hears A Who. I used to handle accounts, but could not handle my own. Take full responsibility. Its too difficult to know which internally-discussed information is confidential and which isnt. So if shes genuinely surprised at this outcome, it stands to reason that its new for her, which strongly implies she just hasnt been working very long, which implies youth. but to start the process of damage control. You can get past this, if you learn from the experience. No one was allowed to approach her and her desk for the week and every night she locked up the removable ribbon from her typewriter because it could be unspooled and read. Thats why they told you the information was confidential. Im not understanding how OPs update comment reads as defensiveit shows significant progression from deflection to ownership, to me. ); 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). Absolutely! Weve all made mistakes. Also, legally email addresses themselves dont typically count as 'personal information' as they are contact addresses and are treated in similar ways to phone numbers legally, as opposed to, say, identifying information like full name, DOB and home address all in one document. The Census Bureau does NOT play with that sort of thing, and you would indeed be given the boot as soon as the breach was uncovered. You arent entitled to a second chance to screw this up. Im not feeding a narrative, Im expressing my opinion. Wait, what the friend is a *journalist*?. Maintaining confidentiality is a foundational occupational requirement in a lot of fields. How you analyze the situation and internalize the lesson is more important than wording for future employers right now. Also ratty. Basically, one of the key ways that spies get information is by social engineering picking up seemingly minor information through friendly chat that they can then combine together to make more. Are you being GDPR compliant in your marketing? A further 2 years can be added onto the sentence for aggravated identity theft. It could also end poorly if the employer actually sees a job opening posted for the position the LW claims was eliminated. I gossip too much, including at work. nsx advanced load balancer documentation; . And by becoming the must fanatically trustworthy discreet person. In some cases, those policies . Thats the real clincher here for me) and on a personal level with management your position is one of trust and you violated the basis of your work. I got that impression as well and have had younger coworkers who sent random, very personal info to me in texts. LW, first, I want to offer sympathy. and sent to multiple people (!!)? There ARE circumstances in which keep this confidential means you can tell very close, trusted people about it as they did in the letter. Humans, in general, are not geared towards confidentiality and secrecy long-term. I always appreciate your combination of kindness and firm clarity. I was fired over the phone. That doesnt seem to be you, which is a great sign. Same here! You unpromptedly wrote a message to the friend. Alisons given you great words to say now its to you to live out your learning with sincerity and build trust with a new employer. Also to prevent someone who might be a bit dangerous, from hurting you. Fired for gross misconduct because I sent confidential information to personal mailbox - how do I get another job? There are people who would refuse to acknowledge their error and go about their lives being bitter and blaming others. From a government point of view, the only thing that matters is this: LW was trusted to handle confidential information and keep it inside the agencys control; instead she passed that information to someone outside that permission (whose job is to disseminate information to the public!) You did a thing that caused this outcome. Replying to the sender is a good thing to do for a couple of reasons. They may. Nothing dangerous, and while I was there it honestly wasnt even anything that would be a big scoop or exciting dinner party story. Non-Disclosure Agreements - Workplace Fairness Then what? This was supposed to be a stand-alone comment. Cut to a couple hours later, and Im called into my bosss office because she has heard that I leaked this information to a SLACK CHANNEL FULL OF JOURNALISTS. If there were excetions, that would be explicitly stated. Going forward definitely own this mistake and explain that you are freaking Fort Knox going now to new employers, knowing now the seriousness of such a transgression. Obviously telling the friend was the fireable offense here, Im not arguing that. [duplicate]. Choose your time limit (you can only choose from between 5, 10, 20, and 30 seconds) Hit save changes at the bottom of the page. Your coworker was not at all in the wrong here, OP. Im not sure what the best way is to address this, but were trying! Here are five such rules, most of which were broken by Block (who reportedly left Oracle yesterday.) It also protects the coworker from any immediate threats or retribution by LW. Like X candidate is running for president!. You kind of glaze over this, OP, but if you spoke in this meeting as you did here then I wonder if thats the real reason for the firing. when we had a high school shooting, a student I knew (10 y old) and who got into it (gladly uninjured) got a visit from his own uncle who was a journalist that very evening, who came to visit the parents and then proceeded to try to get his nephew to talk about the details. But from there you can talk about what you learned from the experience and how this makes you a better employee/candidate now. My mom worked in sunshine law for state government, and what constitutes a record is a lot broader than most people realize. In other words, this whole line of discussion is moot. There wasnt any risk, my judgment was good!. You said in your letter that you were so excited that you wanted to share it in celebration. Copyright 2007 - 2023 Ask A Manager. exciting! My first thought was of the whole JK Rowling / Robert Galbraith fiasco. Employees who violate their companies' email policies can face penalties ranging from disciplinary action to termination. Honestly, I got the impression that the writer was on the younger end, just in their self-reported actions and reactions. You made a mistake. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. I fully expect that whenever they find the source of the leak the people involved will face some pretty serious consequences up to and including dismissal and possible criminal proceedings. Its definitely not a spur if the moment decision. But this was a self-inflicted wound, and you shouldnt frame it otherwise. My point is that you learn how to share AND maintain confidentiality. Thank you it was getting boring to read everyones outrage. 4) The coworker was absolutely right to report the breach in confidentiality. Or does it only matter that I broke a rule? Candidate must then come up with a good reason why former employer wont re-hire given they merely eliminated the position. Click the "Settings" icon (the wheel/cog) and click "See all settings". So, either way my point remains. Sometimes when we receive an email meant for someone else, its just spam. Then, when someone particularly notable would enter our database, we would get a reminder email not naming names but reminding us that no matter how interesting the information is, its private and not ok to share. Good Lord, no. Hind-sight is 20/20, but the LW should have thought twice about sharing that leaked incident with any coworker, especially a mentor who likely would be obligated to let the higher-ups know. OP notes that she is a government employee. The heads on spikes of the modern workplace. I get so exasperated with TV shows where a SO throws a tantrum about a cop/government worker not being able to tell them stuff, and turns it into a trust issue. what did you want to get out of sharing with her? But, its important for an employer to know that you understand the need for reporting and would report things yourself if needed. If its the government, theyd be defending Area 51 unless its a false flag operation, and the point is for the invasion to occur, but show nothing suspicious, because the government already relocated all the aliens! picture of male guinea fowl . Ferry carrying 183 people catches fire in the English - Daily Mail By Candice Novak. Another point: you didnt just accidently tell about it. This reminds me of how Northwestern Hospital had to fire 50 employees back in March for violating HIPAA by accessing Jussie Smolletts medical records. So seriously, just dont tell anyone at all, fight the temptation, its an icy slope. To be clear, you were fired for admittedly breaking confidentiality not because of your coworker. Sorry that this happened to you (Ive made stupid mistakes too) but you may want to consider keeping problems like this to yourself. Practice talking about it until you can truly pull it off. Thank you for explaining this! This is a very astute comment, especially your last paragraph. So have a lot of other people who have managed to find other jobs. If any of those connections were being intercepted by an unknown third party, however, you've just put your customer's data into their hands. Absolutely this. My employer lost a lawsuit where they had been sued for violating open records and meetings laws. I might consider you as a candidate who truly gets it in a way that someone who hasnt been tried by fire might not. Maybe you get a 2nd chance IF you were contrite enough and blamed your excitement at the new teapot program. I think she got paid in sandwiches and the knowledge she was the only woman to neck with Nero Wolfe, though. Almost every situation I know of where someone was fired for cause was presented publically as a position elimination.. Based on the post its probably public now, so I would guess its likely not too exciting. Thank you for saying that feelings are never wrong. I imagine there are a lot like that in government but he learned from working with a non apologetic, scandal plagued politician that consequences of what seems little to you may not be to the tabloids. How to you ensure you're aware of it, and following it? It can, should, and does happen, depending on the details of what all happened. Also, am I even allowed to bring up the fact that someone ratted me out? (And thats before you tack on that LW thought it wasnt SO bad because he told Journalist Jason, who can keep a secret, as opposed to Reporter Robert, whos a real sieve.).

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