Not all non-public information is expected to be treated like a state secret, assuming youre not dealing with actual classified information or NDAs. We asked them why they did it. super! I wont lie, Im tremendously curious, but I also know this is just one of those things I will never get to know. How should I explain that I'm looking for a job because my employer may be shutting down? Right. The project Im currently working on has confidentiality and embargoes that are all geared toward creating a marketplace moment. I hope you find something good soon and can put this behind you. I agree. Well, it has been released now, so technically we could. This is a great point LW. I think in both cases, part of the concern is this retroactive removal of risk. I can remember almost exactly what I said: It was wrong of me to put that information out. What video game is Charlie playing in Poker Face S01E07? That, and I never slapped another plucky again. 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. Shell lose credibility in the hiring process, and even if she did slip through and get hired, its automatically grounds for a dismissal if the truth ever came to light (even in Canada, where it is harder to let people go from roles than in most of the US states). how else could you have met that need?) ugh, no if you cant tell them the actual news, dont tease it. You violated your contract so your previous employer had little choice but to let you go - your new employer will understand this but if you show them you've accepted responsibility for it and will make sure never to do that again then I think you've got a good chance of getting another position. 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. We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. This is why you never ever confidentially share work-related things with colleagues. Excellent points, especially LWs use of ratted out. Alison has said so many times that theres no tattling in the work world. Despite a good track record and being with this team for a few years now, the rules were made very clear to me and I know I wouldnt be given a second chance in that situation. Ive represented or advised friends, friends of friends and the occasional famous person, and nobody else knows anything about it nor will they ever. Even if this person had not turned her in, there was this bomb just sitting there waiting to go off. trouble, it doesnt seem applicable. Having said that, as a hiring manager, if you were able to talk to me about how this one-time error in judgment caused a deep shift in thinking and was a critical pivot point in your professional development I would hear you out. That functions differently from confidential information in government sectors and sounds closer to your examples in your original comments, but it would still be a really bad idea to share that information. Extremely good advice! Its completely understandable that you were upset about it when you wrote in (and upset about it now). It was the wrong thing to do, and Im sorry. The info I released did not in fact cause any problems, but I tremble now because it so easily could have, in even slightly different circumstances. No one is trying to tell the OP that she needs to be friends with this former coworker. And Im pointing out that it wasnt a record at all. Cmon, it was. If yes, that is relevant to the question. A recent Harvard Business Review article indicated widespread use in the workplace, with over one third of the US . The LW actually had a responsibility to keep the info confidential, and the friend doesnt. Same here! Youve got some great feedback from Alison and I hope it all works out for you. For the other 2 questions, I would simply urge you to remove the phrase ratted out from your professional vocabulary. this is one of the reasons why its best to have a mentor who is NOT at the same company as you. Unfortunately there are certain positions where you dont get a second chance when the error knowingly breaking a rule. But I now realize that I had no business sharing my bad behavior with colleagues it put them into a completely untenable position. But I think in order to talk about this with future employers, youve got to take more responsibility for it. If that is so, there is nothing you can do to avoid the termination and you should be looking for new employment. And it seems like you do. You know thats not how that works. Im sure the letter writer has plenty of that to deal with already. Maintaining confidentiality is a foundational occupational requirement in a lot of fields. I would argue if you acknowledge your error in judgment, it would work more to your benefit, then classifying it as a one-off mistake and overreaction by your company. It would have been better if she had told you first that she was going to tell someone And, yeah, that happens, its part of being a human. If someone preempts that, theyre not happy about it generally. But they took confidentiality very seriously, and I signed an extremely ironclad NDA, so I never told anyone any of the interesting tidbits I found out about from working there. The person is trying to make someone else feel bad about their own transgressions. Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. Forgetting to attach a mentioned attachment is common, but still embarrassing. When youre put in a position of trust like that and then abuse that trust, you really leave the organization with no other option but to let you go, even if it is your first offense. One day its pre-public FOUO information; what next? I work for a charity that offers a telephone service nationwide, and I take a lot of calls from people in quite distressing situations. If there were excetions, that would be explicitly stated. they dont owe it to you to offer that opportunity, That reminds me of the guys who say, I know I cheated on you, but I want a second chance.. Even if the coworker had malicious intentions, they were following privacy laws and regulations. Plus you might be doing them a massive favour when it comes to catching a data breach early. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information ninkondi prime stance 3d parallax background mod apk latest version take me to st ives cambridgeshire can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. When weve made a mistake, it often feels unfair when we dont get an opportunity to explain, defend, and/or redeem ourselves. There are no legal ramifications or civil lawsuits at this stage as it wasn't trade secrets or secret IP. I was then let go but will be extremely vigilant in the future to never let this happen again. Which is not how I would handle things now, but I was a lot younger and in a bad place in my personal life, so. Since its a government agency, I have to wonder if there are regulations in place about this kind of leak as well, most places that deal with confidentiality clauses arent messing around with them. 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 made a dumb mistake and misjudged the sensitivity of some data" is both more accurate and less severe. But imagine you are the government and someone leaked information. I dont work for the government but I do work with what are technically health records, although theyre not full patient charts or anything. (Obviously dont tell any potential employer that but its my personal opinion). Your feelings are wrong, in this context means,Your feelings arent *morally* wrong.. The information was work i was working on at the moment and I emailed it as I needed to do work on my personal laptop ; I couldn't take my work station away whilst on extended leave overseas. Examples that most journalists would find pretty snoozy (although journalists who cover the agency super-closely for trade publications, Politico Pro, Bloomberg Gov, etc, would still be interested): Some agencies will only provide title and dates of employment, which is a lucky break for you. You put your coworker in an awful spot by telling her this information. The type of violation you are talking about normally only applies to confidential (shall close) records and not non-public (may close) records. You can get past this, if you learn from the experience. 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. If that puts it in perspective. If theres anything else you can say about your work there to put this in context like that you had received a glowing performance review, were taking on increasing levels of responsibility, etc. 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. This type of thing could have easily happened to your journalism friend in the office. You arent entitled to a second chance to screw this up. I want to encourage you to drill deeper on something you said in your letter: I did feel guilty. Everyone absolutely everyone employed at a hospital has to undergo annual HIPAA compliance training. The government takes this stuff very very seriously. So you let the cat out of the bag about the cat your zoo bagged? Regulation people have heard of is going to be changed/repealed and its a big deal The first person needs to understand that most of the time, you arent entitled to negotiate a yes, because the answer is no. And it makes sense that it is. You knew better. It should go without saying: a breach of confidentiality could and would wind up in a bar complaint in my jurisdiction. Also, she wasnt a journalist I ever interacted with professionally shes a friend Ive had for years. If you cant keep your mouth shut then you need a new line of work. That was not an enjoyable situation at all. I think it most likely would be very boring, but some stuff like the jobs report a few days early would be very interesting to unscrupulous investors. I wonder LW, would your interactions with the higher ups have been different if your co-worker/mentor had given you the heads up that she was going to have to report this? Yep! On other occasions, you might accidentally receive a confidential email with information meant for one person (or a few people) you know. When you accidentally receive a confidential from someone within your own organisation, things are pretty simple. People find new jobs after being fired all the time. The emotion is neutral; its what you do with it that counts. read something out loud THEN realize that it wasnt public information. Everything the OP described sounds like a non-public record. The embargoes I deal with are not earth-shaking (or even quivering), but the people involved are dead serious about not publicizing the information before a specific time. Point is that the higher-level feelings or lowest level conceptualization (that is, the integration of the gut punch and the sense that it cant have been that bad, if it wasnt meant badly, and sense that it cant have been wrong to trust friend, because friend was trustworthy) are still encouraging OP to draw incorrect conclusions about the seriousness of their action, and the appropriateness of their employers actions. What!!! Man I am swamped with the publicly known project I am barely treading water. Nothing I said contradicts this. Wait, what the friend is a *journalist*?. Or maybe one of those people isnt quite as trustworthy as the person who told them thought they were, and they tell the wrong person, or tell multiple people, or write an article about it because theyre also a journalist. Based on it happening before GSA was born, this most likely happened on a land line. OP notes that she is a government employee. You learned, BOY HOWDY did you learn, and now you dont mess around not even gossiping with co-workers or any of those other little ways that could instill doubt in your discretion. Yes you can. Agreed. Where I work, I cannot legally share information about very exciting things that are happening/about to happen. A senior UK diplomat has resigned over the matter. Id had excellent feedback up until then (if this is true), but I mistakenly shared some non-public information with a friend outside the agency, and they let me go as a result. This was all public information, but the original report was work product of Company A even if it had originally been created by the coworker. The letter writer came here and owned up to what she did and said she knows now it was her fault what do you want her to do, throw herself on a sword? Unfortunately, there are instances where employees have accidentally leaked confidential information. But how do I explain this story to future employers? 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 your framing of this does sound defensive and doesnt sound like youre taking responsibility for what happened. 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. Just keep it to yourself or youll get fired. And thatsnot great? Best of luck in your next job! Alison, I really liked your advice, because it can apply to any situation where the person has truly done something egregious but has to move on. If the email involves sensitive information, this could be a serious problem for the people involved. Honestly, I got the impression that the writer was on the younger end, just in their self-reported actions and reactions. This reminds me of how Northwestern Hospital had to fire 50 employees back in March for violating HIPAA by accessing Jussie Smolletts medical records. 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. Itd be much safer for the LW to ask HR what theyre going to say to other employers asking for references. A first offense is still a breach in trust. Well, you certainly can do that, but its one hell of a risk, and a continuation of poor ethics. Accidents do happen, we are all human but what rights you have if you share private company information by mistake really depends on a few things: the type of information that was accidentally distributed, how this impacted your company, and what the consequences were for you. Fired. These comments seem harsh for the most part. Lack of the maturity to keep exciting news to onesself. Contact the GDPR manager at once. A misdirected email describes an instance where an email is sent to the wrong person or the wrong attachment has been added to an email that has the correct recipients in it. I wouldnt lead with it, but I wouldnt hide it either if it ever comes up, and folks will likely ask about why youve left past jobs. I would not immediately snap into how can I report this? Like, its so obviously wrong that people dont even talk about it. 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. Agree with this. No! Yep, I think its worth LW remembering that while she knew shed never leak anything again, her boss and co-workers dont. (Drunk driving is an extreme example of this. Which is so far beyond the truth Im honestly wondering if this coworker had it out for me the whole time. I did not get fired for the offense, but I genuinely learned a great deal from the experience and it changed the entire way I interacted with clients, for the better. The awareness that anything sent in your work email is subject to FOIA and open records requests really varies. While it's not always easy to identify the cause for leakage of information, it's important to try to find the security vulnerabilities that make your information less secure. TootsNYC is talking about this latter case. They looked at themselves as an organization and realized that the damage was irrevocable. Yeah, I thought it was from her personal cell too. And this will definitely have an effect on how you come across to people interviewing you in future. I will never not believe the publisher did that intentionally and threw him under the bus. They sound far more serious than what happened. As a government employee they are obligated to report a breach of information regardless of whether they like the employee they are reporting or hate their guts. reading. I work in a field (not government) where some nonpublic is newsworthy but only in the arts and style sections. Personal info is never OK to share with anyone, or things that could lead to recognizing a person if someone happens to know that person (and you never know who knows who). Much as we like to think confidentiality is transferrablethat as long as the people we tell keep things confidential we didnt breach confidentiality to tell themits not. And I did use Slack on my work computer, and I did interact professionally with some journalists who covered my area over Slack. Every employer Ive worked for (finance) has done annual or semi-annual privacy/information security trainings, and while theyre tiresome for some of us, theyre certainly helpful in continually reinforcing hey, this is a very very very very very big mcf**king deal. Sent a confidential email to the wrong address? This was not the coworker telling the boss that OP left 5 minutes early, took a personal call during work hours but OP violating a strict rule even if they trusted the friend. You shouldnt be upset at your coworker, if anything she should be upset with you for putting her in that situation. If I were in the coworkers position, I would need to do the same thing.
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