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That mindset is just so messed up. Thank you for following up with Alison and here in the comments, and Im sorry for what youre going through. I work as a contractor on a program that just announced 10 new cities will be joining. Yep. All rights reserved. It may be unfair to assume a journalist is cutthroat and would kill for a lead. What video game is Charlie playing in Poker Face S01E07? Hi LW, I agree with Alison the best way to approach with is by taking full ownership of what happened. Its also possible that she got caught in a broader crackdown on leaks and thus wasnt given a second chance when she otherwise might have been. Even when it doesnt require them to report it, it still could have consequences they dont want to be a part of! Im in Chicago so I read about those firings with interest. Yep. You simply let the sender know you've received it by accident, then they can rectify their mistake and you can delete the email. Its a risk when you ignore these compliance issues especially willfully. Even there, be very sure the person youre talking to has the same access you do. It wasnt particularly kind to her friend, either. that one would be unable to resist texting a friend. LW is undisciplined and has a big mouth. Sometimes it can be a blessing in disguise. +100. These policies are sometimes written down in employee handbooks. Or if the coworker only decided afterwards this couldnt be kept in the dark, call her and tell her this. 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. Humans, in general, are not geared towards confidentiality and secrecy long-term. This is a very astute comment, especially your last paragraph. You would never want someone to find out from the news media that they no longer have a job, for example. Until the boys parents threw the uncle out. Better to say in a single instance of poor judgment I let a piece of information get outside of the company to one person which I immediately knew was a mistake and I notified someone in my company. Like its going to be easier to find a job because she has the integrity to say she got fired. What I ended up doing is learning to avoid mopped floors as much as possible and warning people to be careful around them. You might add to Alisons script, I knew immediately that I needed to report my indiscretion, and I did so right away. Im sorry, what? I might consider you as a candidate who truly gets it in a way that someone who hasnt been tried by fire might not. update: how can I turn down training requests from my clients? The 2nd chance is just too much risk as far as theyre concerned. Your feelings are wrong, in this context means,Your feelings arent *morally* wrong.. I love my younger co-workers and value their fresh take on things and energy, but there is a clear pattern of not understanding reputation risk and liability. Have you learned from your mistake? To me, her wrong doesnt justify her mentor going behind her back. Your tone is very this wasnt a big deal and I shouldnt have been fired for it, when it really should be I made a foolish mistake which I deeply regret and Ive definitely learned my lesson. President issuing an executive order on (issue the agency deals with) Some certainly will, especially those who are more security-conscious. And youre being very generous toward the coworker in saying she misunderstood and mistakenly misrepresented it. There are lots of situations in which leaking information to a journalist would absolutely be the right thing to do, and we should absolutely encourage it in those cases. Interpretations, justifications, conceptualizations can also be wrong, surely. 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. Trying to tell the OP otherwise is to minimize the impact of a serious offense. Even though he loves the MCU and would have enjoyed the anecdotes. How exciting! and I started reading the details from the email out loud to him. If you were fired for an embarrassing reason that would torpedo your chances in an interview, say that your position was eliminated. Employer found out and had grounds to fire you. But how do I explain this story to future employers? I understand that you get that what you did was a very big deal as a single event, but I think you might need to spend some more time examining for yourself why you would describe this as a victimless crime. The fact that your friend didnt as far as you know tell anyone else about your bombshell doesnt meant that nothing happened. Cringe. I used to be a journalist, I have lots of friends who are journalists and I never tell them anything that I shouldnt, even the ones I really trust. Im not sure what the best way is to address this, but were trying! Thats not really a response to the OP but more a pushback on some the comments. Share information about the new roller coaster being put in at a theme park? That said, I am curious if theres other context that explains why they fired you for a first offense without warning you first. Even innocuous-sounding information, like the name of a database, can be a huge security risk. They looked at themselves as an organization and realized that the damage was irrevocable. Absolutely this. how did HR and OPs boss come to the conclusion that this information was spread through Slack (!) Its like pain (heck, it IS pain); its telling you something important. Yeah, wouldnt it be possible to prove (or rather disprove) that you leaked to a slack channel full of journalists? Hopefully whatever she disclosed doesnt violate a public access law, since the information was released publicly shortly afterward, but wow did she dodge a bullet. If a member of your staff violates this explicit. Oh, thats a risky tack for OP to take if they want to stay in their field. The mistake may not have been trusting the friend with that information, but it was definitely telling her. AND I told somebody within the company about that? Not all non-public information is expected to be treated like a state secret, assuming youre not dealing with actual classified information or NDAs. Obviously leaking to one journalist that youre friends with is better than leaking to a whole Slack channel full of them, but partly because its possible to do the first innocently, whereas theres no question of innocence with the latter. 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. This is your making, and while I wish you luck, you have zero cause to be disgruntled with your coworker or employer. And that wasnt even technically confidential. I was reading the email at home and after reading the first paragraph I exclaimed out loud (so my spouse could hear) Ooooh. Telling the trusted friend was the fireable offense. How to handle a hobby that makes income in US. Yup. LW used Slack at work (and was not supposed to) If I ever texted a journalist about nonpublic information Id be 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.. Damn, thats hard core. Journalists discuss things all the time that dont make it into published stories, or make it into stories that get killed, or get used for shaping further investigation, or even just as gossip. Did you apologize profusely and then explain that there was some miscommunication here? I was wondering the same thing. If its obvious who the email was intended for, just forward it on and cc the original sender, letting them know what youve done. Its not about breaking a rule, its about potentially causing some serious issues by leaking information. Gov employee here and I would be in trouble as well for not reporting what LW told coworker. Training in this area is important generally, but a communications/ PR person should not need to be reminded to keep sensitive information confidential thats a very basic aspect of the job. I was new, too eager to please, naive and I let the client rush me instead of following established protocol. Thats not how embargoes work, and the reasons why we have embargoes are important and valid, even if they may seem like not a big deal in the context of a specific disclosure. 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. Also, the OP wont be able to ever claim the good work experience she gained from the role. All people, of all ages, are capable of errors in judgment. The client can, of course, prevent such disclosure by refraining from the wrongful conduct. As I said below, that may be why you werent given a second chance. As others mentioned, the breach is possibly a fire on first offense potential, but since they fired you after investigating slack that makes me wonder if you had too casual and friendly of chats with the journalists whose job it was for you to talk with. Maybe thats the case in your field, but usually confidential doesnt mean that. Its not possible to catch every mistake or typo over the course of a whole career. Im not sure you can conclude that it was publically disclosable. Everything from whats going to be on sale for Black Friday, to customer financial data. (Drunk driving is an extreme example of this. If the email involves sensitive information, this could be a serious problem for the people involved. You can get past this, if you learn from the experience. Once you told your coworker, you dragged her out there on the plank with you. You may want to target less security-sensitive industries or environments until you've worked up enough of a resume after this event to show that you're reliable. I replaced someone who had embezzled from the (small) company. That means that you definitely shouldnt get into anything about anyone ratting you out; that would make it sound like you dont think it really should have mattered. |. Lack of rigor. If you can trust someone, you can trust them, journalist or not. We were interviewing someone who had broken the #1 cardinal ethical rule in our industry (a branch of health care). That has an impact on real estate values and could make a government employee excited. Employees. how do employers know if you're answering "have you ever been fired" honestly? > On Monday, I was called into a fact-finding meeting with HR. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. 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!! Re-evaluating my original comment, Id still consider lying if attempts to explain the firing in interviews end up in disaster. 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. I work in the auto industry in media communications. The point still stands, however, that Contract Killers proposed sanctions likely dont appear to apply here. 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. If someone told me something that I know Id have to report, I would report it. I dont think your coworker ratted you out. Im not trying to teach her a lesson, necessarily, she seems to have gotten the point. We go through training every 6 months, that we should NOT to tell the coworker or customer that we will need to report them. We wont tell anyone. 100%? Ratted me out annoys me too, because it just means that someone told the truth and wouldnt cover for your lie. Disclosing Government information to a journalist (even a friend in confidence) without permission is a major breach of confidence and Im not surprised it resulted in a significant sanction. And then they did it again. In "Labs," scroll down to "Undo Send" and enable it. Yeah, thats a good point. I wonder how trustworthy the LW considers themself (sp?)? However, placing the blame on the coworker for the entire situation, even just in her own head, is likely to come though when she talks about why she was fired. On other occasions, you might accidentally receive a confidential email with information meant for one person (or a few people) you know. What!!! If someone preempts that, theyre not happy about it generally. It was a couple of telling E-mails that helped bring down Bear Stearns with the subprime loan mess crashing . If OP reasoned I told mentor, confident that there was NO WAY she would let anything slip it throws a lot of doubt on her parallel reasoning of how certain it was that the journalist wouldnt let anything slip. 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. Agreed, except for this: a journalist, who by profession is at risk for leaking said confidential information. We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. As Alison said, its a lot like DUI; even if no one gets hurt, theres a reason we shouldnt take those risks. I get that people can learn from their mistakes, but this could be an indicator of a lack of proper framework, and perhaps a boss wouldnt want to risk it. Just *looking* at the account would get you noticed and your hand slapped (if you were lucky). This is just an opportunity to choose words that allow for the most generous possible interpretation (similar to how you say with a friend rather than with a journalist). The HIPAA Rules require all accidental HIPAA violations, security incidents, and breaches of unsecured PHI to be reported to the covered entity within 60 days of discovery - although the covered entity should be notified as soon as possible and notification should not be unnecessarily delayed. I consider it my greatest ethical obligation in my job, because I have been entrusted with sensitive information and I treat it like Id want mine to be treated. How do I tell potential future employers why I got fired and have them still want to hire me? It would have been better if she had told you first that she was going to tell someone I would go through the channels to fire someone immediately over this, because it would make me lose all trust in them and if I can no longer be confident in their abilities to do their job effectively without spillage, theyre of no use to my team. Confidentiality is a big deal for a lot of reasons, and people in those types tend to respect that. Similar in IT in my first internship, I had access to about 40,000 social security numbers. If yes, that is relevant to the question. This isnt breaking a rule; its potentially putting your organization in jeopardy. You are right. Trying to understand how to get this basic Fourier Series, Linear regulator thermal information missing in datasheet. Id instantly think that youd learned nothing, that no information we kept around you would be secure, and that anything we brought to you as far as behavior we needed you to change would suddenly be labeled as victimless and only because *truly irrelevant fact here* and unfair. This was also my thought. You added nuance that I hadnt thought about. Possible scripting adjustment: I mistakenly shared some non-public information with a friend outside the agency before it was officially released to the public. The terminology is often not eligible for rehire., And every time Ive ever given a formal reference, that has been one of the questions: Would you hire her again? or Is she eligible for rehire?. They did exactly the right thing to you. Yeah. 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. There wasnt any risk, my judgment was good!. More employers are still going to be turned off by that than impressed. 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. We will always be privy to confidential information in our roles, its the nature of what we do. But if youre singling people out, or only using it in the context of chastising someone, then yeah, for sure condescending and rude. Click "Enable" if it isn't selected already. Egress Software Technologies Ltd. Find out what you should do when a misdirected email lands in your inbox. There were maybe 50 of us on the team for the app. People find new jobs after being fired all the time. The actual problem is that OP shared confidential information. OP has been mature about admitting fault, lets not undermine that by implying it was no big deal. For me, that was it. After all, nobody wants to tell their manager that they might (however accidentally) be responsible for a data breach. 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. It doesnt matter if your friend is a journalist or not; thats a total red herring. She showed no contrition or reflection. What probably really hurt the OPs case was that the friend is a journalist. read something out loud THEN realize that it wasnt public information. So for instance when I got an emergency grant from a water supplier for a woman with no income, there wasnt any risk that telling my wife would identify the woman. Perhaps Archie neglected to mention it. 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. You will bounce back! Yeah, I thought it was from her personal cell too. Minimizing it will make it harder for future employers to trust OP, whereas frank ownership and an action plan will read as much more responsible and accountable. Basically, I was fired for X mistake. This kind of reaction from the company screams 'serious laws broken' and there aren't many other possibilities on what these laws maybe. Really? I have to deal with famous folks at well; I work for a company that handles federal medical insurance and every once in a while I might run across Justice X, Senator Y, etc. Lose that part of the defense completely, OP. Thats totally true, and when I worked for state government release of confidential information would have been grounds for immediate termination, but Alison is the only one who calls it confidential, OP calls it non-public. 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. The best solution for avoiding misdirected email altogether is through human layer security. 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. FIFTY?! Based on the post its probably public now, so I would guess its likely not too exciting. A very long-term employee who did excellent work, as a joke, made up a fake news release that indicated we got the contract. You knew better. Contact the GDPR manager at once. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. Learn how to protect your investment management firm through intelligent email DLP. It may help you to know that the dreaded why are you unemployed right now question doesnt come up in every interview. Fascinating (and fun!) because your performance / screw-up affects them, or because they feel they are being compared to you and want to put the record straight to defend themselves), or out of a sense that they have an obligation to report (whether or not they actually do). I dont know, I think thats overstating. In other words, dont assume the information only went to the person you sent it to. And then that coworker did tell someone, and she was fired. But this was a self-inflicted wound, and you shouldnt frame it otherwise. It's hard to answer this question without specifics, but it strikes me as very important to differentiate between an accident or mistake in the sense of "oops, I did that by unintentionally" versus misconduct, as in "this was against policy and I deliberately did it anyways" regardless of whether you knew about the policy or had a good reason to do it or not. Being honest going forward really will help OP to repair the damage to her reputation and show she has integrity. Just keep it to yourself or youll get fired. And thatsnot great? Yeah, this is a big part of it. 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. how do I tell employers I was fired for a video I put on YouTube? Youll get another job. 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. Then b) she felt so guilty she admitted it to a coworker. Only hope going forward is own up flatly and without defensiveness . This is an actual security headache/nightmare for my government department as its so common for people to go out to lunch and start discussing what theyre working on while eating. The rules are severe because people need externals to keep them motivated. When telling me about the call, she said that when the checker said the guys name, she couldnt stop herself from bursting out, Wait, he told you to call me?!. Noooo. Government tends to operate differently. Getting fired sucks. You said it yourself that you were working on client confidential information, and sent it to your personal mailbox. While I agree that this needs to be explained in the right way. If you own your mistake, meditate on it, learn from it, and learn to tell the story of how you learned from it, then you might be able to get another job in the communications industry working for a company that does not handle sensitive client data, or in another industry where there are no potential confidentiality issues with your job. As someone who practices public relations, calling this victimless gives me a lot of anxiety. Fired. 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. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. assigning women extra work to help them, calling out when youre in the ER, and more. You just seem to still want an answer and I picked up on this as a possible avenue to reflect on in your letter. People have gotten jobs in their field after vastly more serious forkups, don't despair. LW, I work under some pretty hefty NDAs (currently, Im working on a project where the security protocols themselves are considered to be non-shareable with anyone who doesnt have a business need for them and hasnt also signed an NDA. I wanted to add to the part about putting your friend in a bad position: shes a journalist its a competitive industry and being first with the story matters a lot. Maybe OPs workplace does the same? And there was no social media then, so 100+++ times that now. it doesnt count as they reported themselves if they later say they were ratted out by the person they reported it to. Changing how you feel (as opposed to what you say or do or think) is not something you need to do to solve the problem. This makes it seem like they owe LW something, to be loving and release her to her best life. I did something similar over 20 years ago. I dont work for the government but I do work with what are technically health records, although theyre not full patient charts or anything.