can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information
Yep. 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? However, I will agree that, per OPs statement, the information appears to be unsolicited and doesnt seem like it would have been considered a records request (who knows, we dont have a lot of information and what we have has been proven to be distorted). It seems like LW has had time to process and isnt being combative. a. problem then you APOLOGIZE and APOLOGIZE rather than defend yourself. I guess you just say I inadvertently let an important piece of information get out and I will take extraordinary safeguards to never let that happen again. Well, this is both unkind and off-base. The only thing an employer may not do is make employment decisions based upon you being a member of a protected class. And maybe they can, and maybe that chain will end with someone who doesnt forward the info on, or peter out once the information does become public in this case. Count your blessings that you just got fired. They are designed to trick the recipient . Wouldnt you ask why the govt didnt fire them the first time? In an ideal world, it doesnt happen at all. Shouldnt she be in trouble too? and there she would be, going down with you. OP, take a deep breath. This was more or less what I was thinking. Your coworker was probably legally obligated to report this, and even is she wasnt this is the type of breach that reasonable people WILL report. (IE: if they think you f*cked up, then respond like you did, however you actually feel). One day its pre-public FOUO information; what next? You can -and often should convey emotion in your official public statements. 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. For the other 2 questions, I would simply urge you to remove the phrase ratted out from your professional vocabulary. Passing it off as a mistake, or trying to portray ignorance (in the sense of saying "oh, I didn't realize it was wrong when I did it") is just going to make it sound like you don't bother understanding or following policies. They fell prey to the Its just a quick peek and it wont hurt anybody fallacy. An employer of mine got a FOIA request where they asked for every email wed sent to anyone from any regulatory agency. 7 Ways Your E-mail Can Get You Fired - US News & World Report If it was more time than 6 months, thats a resume gap that a recruiter will ask about, and if the OP lies about the gap, an experienced recruiter will hear it in her voice. I accidently sent an attachment that contained confidential I was coming to the comments section to say the same thing. I work for a public universitys PR office and I 100% know Id be fired if I shared info with anyone before pub date. When I finally came clean about it an interview, the response from the hiring manager was thats ridiculous, I would never fire anyone for that.. OP, think about your choice to share with this person. Or when she builds a pattern of sharing harmless information until suddenly it isnt harmless? While it clearly appears LW would not have done any of this, the regulations and policies are written to protect the employer and coworker from any potential negative actions. But if you act that way about a mistake at a previous job, I think people might worry about the same behavior in the future. Thats a flat out easy to uncover lie. The info is out, the tech used to spread it is irrelevant and a distraction from the problem. I wonder if OP ever got the chance to correct the misunderstanding. Its not a victimless crime and you have to understand the seriousness of what you did, even unintentionally. I could have just sent the report and most likely no one would have ever known, but it would have been a violation of company policy. This friend understood the gravity of the information I told her, and I 100% trusted her to not leak it. I went to my boss explained the situation and let me boss make the decision if we wanted to share the report. As I said below, that may be why you werent given a second chance. I am not falling on the sword or putting my job on the line for a coworker. However, it is unlikely that the circumstances of your firing will be able to be overlooked by an employer who needs to trust your judgment with sensitive data, definitely for the foreseeable future, possibly for many years into your career. Accidents or mistakes are bound to happen. As soon as someone has decided you're not a team player, or are a problem employee, then even tiny things get seen as evidence that you should be fired. I feel your pain. 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. The obligation to report a security breach doesnt include warning the violator. I wouldnt be obligated by anything other than displaced loyalty if I wanted to try to be squirrelly of course but I respect myself way too much and have my own standards to just keep quiet about things. This is your making, and while I wish you luck, you have zero cause to be disgruntled with your coworker or employer. In a couple of hours, the news agencies were calling the federal government, to verify the news. I sent confidential documents to someone by accident via email I need the file completely removed - Gmail Community Gmail Help Sign in Help Center Community New to integrated Gmail Gmail Stay on. It might possibly be seen as less bad that the information shared was intended to be made public anyway, as opposed to it being information that wasnt ever supposed to get out. The ex-coworker reached out to me asking if I could send them a copy of the report so they didnt have to start from scratch and repeat the same work they had already done. More commonly it means that you either cant share anything, or you cant share parts that someone could connect to a particular client. I did something similar over 20 years ago. Rule 1.6 Confidentiality of Information - Comment Yikes. 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. That way, the Address box of every reply starts out empty. Oh yeah, my response wasnt to you it was just to continue what Alanna said. Sorry that this happened to you (Ive made stupid mistakes too) but you may want to consider keeping problems like this to yourself. Is it FOUO though? Giving her information relevant to her beat and asking her not to share it is basically asking her to stand on the sidelines and fail to do her job, while somebody else gets the scoop. But fairly often it was classified to some degree, and he could only talk about how his project was going but not about what it was. Im very aware of that reality, so I confine my work email to work stuff only. There are different levels of confidentiality for different circumstances. Can I be fired for sending a derogatory text about my boss to my - Avvo What probably really hurt the OPs case was that the friend is a journalist. 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. Where did you go from here? And the coworker, well, this was information that was a major conduct infraction, not just embarrassing or private if a coworker told me theyd done this, Id have promptly reported it, not to humiliate them, but to start the process of damage control. How do I make amends and go about apologizing to former manager(s) after being dismissed for gross misconduct? Although it was mortifying at the time, this has taught me a hard but valuable lesson about handling sensitive information setting boundaries in my relationships with reporters. Possible scripting adjustment: I mistakenly shared some non-public information with a friend outside the agency before it was officially released to the public. Having a mentor at a different organization in a similar role might be a good idea for the future. If yes, that is relevant to the question. OP, I can understand why you would want to talk to someone who was mentoring you about something like this, but when you tell someone you work with that you committed a pretty serious breach of duty and sharing nonpublic information is pretty much always a serious breach!! I was trying to disagree with the idea that it puts journalists in a terrible position to receive off-the-record info, not that it would ameliorate the employers concern. (sorry for all the theys. English has a pronoun problem.). You breached confidential information to a journalist. And maybe you should go next week, because the slots love you and you always win. Does that matter? Good points, and good advice for anyone whos apologizing for anything. 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. "Yes, humor in the workplace is a fabulously invaluable thing that any workplace can benefit greatly from, but when your colleagues already feel buried under a pile of never-ending emails, adding. This incident was a huge violation of trust. Based on it happening before GSA was born, this most likely happened on a land line. Where I work, there are policies that state an employee that finds out about certain kinds of misconduct is mandated to report it or face consequences if it comes out that they knew and didnt report it. When you accidentally receive a confidential from someone within your own organisation, things are pretty simple. If *you* got that carried away, you cant guarantee that she wont, either. Your failure to understand the gravity of your actions is alarming. I previously worked as a journalist. (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.). I know there are cases where someone might fear retaliation etc, but with a higher up getting a subordinate into (deserved sorry OP!) Yep, we regularly are reminded about FERPA requirements (academia) and staff members have gotten in hot water for not promptly picking up student transcripts from the printer (for instance). And youre a risk, on top of having done a fireable offense. Yeah it totally sucks but now you at least have a chance to start fresh. We call this a misdirected email and it's really, really easy to do. So have a lot of other people who have managed to find other jobs. Including their reputation being damaged. Protect your people from socially engineered phishing attacks, Defend against attacks originating from compromised supply chain accounts, Detect fraudulent invoices and payment requests, Prevent people falling victim to targeted impersonation attacks, Defend against the delivery of ransomware and malware by email, Stop phishing attacks that lead to credential theft, Prevent email data loss caused by human error, Block exfiltration of personal and company data, Preserve ethical walls to prevent disclosure of information and avoid conflicts of interest, Apply the appropriate level of encryption to sensitive emails and attachments, Detect and prevent advanced email threats that slip through Microsoft 365, Provide people with easy, actionable advice in real-time at the point of risk, How to use a hacker's toolkit against them. While it didnt result in any press, it was obviously a major lapse in judgment and I understand why it resulted in my termination. How should I explain that I'm looking for a job because my employer may be shutting down? a coworker at my company was discussing a future potential release at a bar loud enough that someone heard it, and then posted it on a public forum. Am I missing something? So far that has not happened. To be clear, you were fired for admittedly breaking confidentiality not because of your coworker. was my company right to fire my coworker for accidentally sending me a Don't use . I do have to wonder if the hospital failed to educate its employees on how freaking serious that kind of breach was, although Id still put the failure on the feet of the violators. 2007-2023. We asked them why they did it. Heres another the state Supreme Court will probably make a decision on voting district gerrymandering soon., (This one happened to me, and was probably the most exciting confidential information I got access to my desk was close enough to the GIS employees that I could see the increased traffic out of their area and infer that Something was Happening. Thats what I would do. She shared it via text not voice, but text, which could be seen by someone else. I think the wider point is that anyone can make that mistake at any age, and speculating about this part of it is irrelevant and not helpful. Exactly this. Further, the laws/regluations dont actually make allowances for how many people are told the confidential information, or how much you, the employee, trusts the person they told. Yes of course it feels bad that you were fired. How do I politely turn down the call for an interview by another employer? Hi LW, I agree with Alison the best way to approach with is by taking full ownership of what happened. They made much more money off of the JK Rowling name. I can remember almost exactly what I said: It was wrong of me to put that information out. Like its going to be easier to find a job because she has the integrity to say she got fired. it doesnt count as they reported themselves if they later say they were ratted out by the person they reported it to. So, you just caused a data breach, by CCing the wrong person in an Don't worry, you're not alone. someone in another department saw the post, reached out to the person who made it and asked for information about the person they had heard it from. I understand the issue had to be reported, but why this way ? If she really understood or valued confidentiality, she would not be trying to convince us of how victimless this was. The focus moving forward should be about realizing how serious a problem it was, how badly you feel about it, and how youre committed to not making the same mistake again. 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. I imagine theres a section in the manual and training (possibly annually) about the great responsibility they bear around confidentiality and how people will try to scam them into breaching security, yet OP does not appreciate the weight of this. Its also totally understandable that youre disappointed about losing your job, but they might have just considered that kind of confidentiality breach too much of a risk going forward. Certainly not an electronic blog. I think people beat themselves up enough internally without us having to do it for them most of the time. 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. This is especially true if the employee in question signed a confidentiality agreement prior to starting the job. 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. Good Lord, no. (Or maybe the coworker did fabricate it, but I feel like thats a massive assumption itself. Many types of information are protected only during specific time frames insider trading comes to mind as a particularly nasty one disclosing inside information about a pending large contract award or trade is absolutely firable. OP: Move to a sector and a position where you wont be called upon to handle confidential information, and admit that you are doing so because youve recognised your own limitations and are willing to actively avoid being a liability to your future employer. I stopped when my boss had a stern talk with me about it, but also because I noticed that I was getting the bad news later, too (other people at my level were told about layoffs the night before, I was told shortly before the companywide announcement) and I realized I was getting a reputation as someone who could not be trusted to keep my mouth shut. The thing is though, you dont get credit for leaking to a trustworthy person who decides not to hang you out to dry. Someone would then check into it to see if there was a valid reason for someone to be poking at it. Because I said I wouldnt, I knew there would be consequences if something like your story happened to me, and also because, hows that going to look to a potential future employer that might value confidentiality equally highly? You can never rely on people to be 100% trustworthy, no matter how long youve known them. I screwed up in grad school and had to go in front of an IRB board for being sent information that I hadnt gotten full clearance for. (Obviously it would have been best not to give her journalist friend the info to begin with.) If not, an investigation would be started on which employees were poking around in Famous Persons account and why. So to summarize, while an individual in your circumstance can be fired for the accidental dissemination of confidential employment information, their employer cannot press criminal charges against them, both because a private entity lacks the authority to make that decision and more fundamentally because the accidental dissemination of . Instead, youre better off with something like, The truth is, I was fired. reading. (It also might be notable that you didnt originally mention that your friend was a journalist until I asked about it which makes me think youre underestimating how much that matters.). 2 July 2018 at 9:11PM. So, if you find out that company X is going to be reporting a surprising drop in profits next week, the person in the company who told you this is gone. Many, many of us in similar positions have made similar mistakes. Note: You dont want to frame this as It would have been made public eventually so I did nothing wrong. Your tone is still very much acknowledging that you messed up. Please keep reflecting on this. I remind people about once a year that not only can I not look up their medical info on my own, I cant look it up even if they ask me to, and I get in even more trouble if I look up my own medical info.
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