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You can’t get private Slack messages easily if you don’t have direct access to the account. There is an audit feature on the Enterprise version that allows it,
by economicalidea 3y ago
You can’t get private Slack messages easily if you don’t have direct access to the account.
There is an audit feature on the Enterprise version that allows it, and you can appeal to slack to open the messages due to a crime or similar - but AFAIK on the normal plans you are out of luck of you want to read private messages as workspace owner.
- adastra22 3y agoRequest access to former employee’s corporate email and reset the password.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoYep. That’s how it happened for me.
- planede 3y agoOuch. My takeaway is that I should probably delete my slack account before leaving the company.
- exitb 3y agoThe takeaway is that no message on Slack should be considered private.
- wil421 3y agoWhy would anyone consider a company provided messaging service as private? Or even a company provided laptop, cellphone, etc.
- adastra22 3y agoPeople have terrible opsec.
- TimTheTinker 3y agoBecause private messages carry an expectation of privacy. They're different parts of speech from the same root word, after all.
- adastra22 3y agoThere’s no legal obligation of privacy on a work system though. Not in the US at least.
- voidfunc 3y agoThe only expectation of this is in your head. It is a fantasy that doesn't exist.
- TimTheTinker 3y agoI know that legally, employee data has no expectation of privacy. But I'd like to gently push back here. The word "private" means "having privacy" in the normal, everyday sense. Using that word to describe something that isn't private is lying. You and I both know there do exist many people who suffered consequences for not understanding the definition of that word. In my opinion, the ethical thing to do is to use a different word when no expectation of privacy applies. And the upside is powerful: transparency gains trust. Slack did this well: they call them "direct messages".
- bluescrn 3y agoI'd extend that way beyond that, to anything done on a company system/network/device. If you need privacy, use your personal phone (and don't connect it to the company wifi)
- hiatus 3y agoDeleting company data before leaving probably won't end well.
- delfinom 3y agoSlack keeps those messages even if you delete the account when you leave. It's a data retention setting.
- morkalork 3y agoHah, that would be the trick wouldn't it. My old manager used to get all of his former employees work emails forwarded to an account he had access to. Ostensibly it was a precaution against accidentally missing anything critical from a vendor or partner.
- the_gipsy 3y agoAnd all but extremely early startups or cheapskate companies have the Enterprise version.
- amenghra 3y agoThe correct mental security model here is “if you used an account on a company issued laptop/phone/any hardware” == “the company technically already has or can get access to the data”. There are so many ways for a company to do that. Granted, some of these ways might be legal or not depending on jurisdiction, but then lots of company will thread or cross the legal fine line if they are happy with the risk/benefit trade off.
- camgunz 3y agoI haven't checked in a while, but I think there's also an API for it too.