Yep. That’s how it happened for me.

Ouch. My takeaway is that I should probably delete my slack account before leaving the company.

The takeaway is that no message on Slack should be considered private.

Why would anyone consider a company provided messaging service as private? Or even a company provided laptop, cellphone, etc.

People have terrible opsec.

Because private messages carry an expectation of privacy.

They're different parts of speech from the same root word, after all.

There’s no legal obligation of privacy on a work system though. Not in the US at least.

The only expectation of this is in your head. It is a fantasy that doesn't exist.

I 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".

I'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)

Deleting company data before leaving probably won't end well.

Slack keeps those messages even if you delete the account when you leave. It's a data retention setting.

Hah, 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.