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Conspiring Against Your Employer? Watch What You Email
Eric Giguere writes "In a story that has Bay Street (the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street) in a kerfuffle, the Globe and Mail writes that bank employees defecting to set up a rival investment firm didn't realize that their employer could easily track the emails and messages they sent and received, even when they're sent via a nominally-secure system like RIM's BlackBerry. In particular, the employees were assuming that the messages they sent via direct PIN-to-PIN communication (a PIN uniquely identifies a BlackBerry device) weren't trackable. But if they're on the device, they're available to the employer to see. The employees may also have thought that PIN-to-PIN messages are encrypted, though RIM has always said that they're not -- it's only the connection to the corporate email server that is secure. A lot of damning information pulled from those emails and messages has made its way into a lawsuit."
These people are in charge of your money, folks.
They are idiots for two reasons.
First, because they clearly acted unethically, which is the really big idiocy. I run my own company and rule number one is due diligence. I am not going to screw myself by doing something that could bite me in the ass further down the line.
It's astonishing how many investment guys simply don't get this. I have literally had my own investment guy sit there and tell me that a particular investment 'cannot lose', in the presence of his lawyer -- who looked very uncomfortable and was forced to intervene by saying "Look, you cannot say that".
Second, anyone who uses unencrypted email on a server they do no control, ESPECIALLY if it belongs to someone they are screwing, deserves to spend the rest of their productive years flipping burgers, or possibly stamping licence plates.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
I just started my own company, directly competing with my previous employer. I spent nearly eight months on their payroll while I began up my own business and sought projects of my own. Here's what I learned:
1. Don't stab anyone in the back (burned bridges, insert your favorite cliche). It can come back to hurt you.
2. Don't give your bosses a reason to be unhappy with you. Work just as hard - or harder. If you're valuable to the company, leaving them will be more painful (and can produce a more profitable situation for you).
3. Encrypt every email, instant message, and web transaction that deals with your activities. Don't assume anything is safe unless you're actively doing something to ensure its security or you can verify it easily (SSL, for instance).
4. Regularly scan your machine for viruses and spyware. Use a packet sniffer to see if you're sending anything unexpected. Look through your machine to see if there are programs installed that shouldn't be there... is your company spying on you?
5. Don't use their phones. Upgrade your damn cell plan and use that.
6. Take advantage of non-company resources for communication and whatnot. Find a decent webmail provider with SSL enabled.
7. Make sure any contract or agreement you signed isn't going to come back to bite you. If you signed a non-compete agreement or whatever, don't assume it's invalid or that they won't pursue it. See a lawyer BEFORE you have legal troubles in this area.
As others have complained, there are loyalty problems in this country. I used to love my job, love my work, and love the company. Some things changed, and while I still love the work I no longer enjoyed anything about the company. Many attempts to change it from within failed. When your boss is taking advantage of you, you need to re-evaluate. When you're stuck in a dead-end, you need to re-evaluate. When you get the line, "if you don't like it, then find somewhere else to work," the time for re-evaluation has passed and it's time to end that part of your life.
Employers aren't loyal to employees any more than we are to them. I heard stories of pre-1980s-boom-and-crash Japan, where a failing company's president would give everything he had back into the company to keep it going as long as possible...and if it wouldn't work, he'd split the cash from his shares, pay, etc. among the employees. This was in return for the lifetime loyalty you gave to the company.