<story><title>Guide to Slack import and export tools</title><url>https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-guide-to-slack-data-exports</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peterkelly</author><text>If two people want to have a private conversation, they&amp;#x27;ll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.</text></item><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong--it&amp;#x27;s not like I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; to read your messages and very likely won&amp;#x27;t. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that. Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone&amp;#x27;s messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I&amp;#x27;ll say this is still not an ideal solution. I don&amp;#x27;t go into private communications unless I have to, and I&amp;#x27;d rather have the option to review specific DMs &amp;#x2F; private channels than dump everything. I really don&amp;#x27;t want &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;; that&amp;#x27;s more than I care to see. Also, to clarify, I&amp;#x27;m in the US and our employees are well aware that communications on company-operated platforms should not be considered private. I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; them to be careful how they communicate in writing, not because they should be worried about me, but because they should be worried about Slack getting hacked&amp;#x2F;leaked. With the recent Facebook news, I should have thought that sort of concern was obvious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tedivm</author><text>I hate to tell you this but if you would quit a job for this reason you probably can&amp;#x27;t work in the US. The US has laws about corporate compliance, and it has requirements for things like dealing with sexual harassment. There is no such thing as a &amp;quot;private conversation&amp;quot; that takes place over a corporate network.&lt;p&gt;For example, in the US sexual harassment is taken seriously. If a company gets a complaint of sexual harassment on Slack they are legally obligated to look into it, and if they refuse to the individual managers could personally be held liable for it. This includes situations where the person being harassed isn&amp;#x27;t directly in the conversation- the above example of harassment over slack could have evidence of coordination in a different private channel than the ones the harassment target is in.</text></comment>
<story><title>Guide to Slack import and export tools</title><url>https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-guide-to-slack-data-exports</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peterkelly</author><text>If two people want to have a private conversation, they&amp;#x27;ll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.</text></item><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong--it&amp;#x27;s not like I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; to read your messages and very likely won&amp;#x27;t. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that. Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone&amp;#x27;s messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I&amp;#x27;ll say this is still not an ideal solution. I don&amp;#x27;t go into private communications unless I have to, and I&amp;#x27;d rather have the option to review specific DMs &amp;#x2F; private channels than dump everything. I really don&amp;#x27;t want &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;; that&amp;#x27;s more than I care to see. Also, to clarify, I&amp;#x27;m in the US and our employees are well aware that communications on company-operated platforms should not be considered private. I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; them to be careful how they communicate in writing, not because they should be worried about me, but because they should be worried about Slack getting hacked&amp;#x2F;leaked. With the recent Facebook news, I should have thought that sort of concern was obvious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dspillett</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; If two people want to have a private conversation&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You response is based on a false fact: that anything you use official company communication channels for should be considered private.&lt;p&gt;HR functions can and will access such communication to investigate complaints about behaviour and similar. Compliance and legal functions can and will access such communication to investigate complaints relevant to them. They can, will, and often &lt;i&gt;must&lt;/i&gt; provide access to such communication to relevant external bodies (legal authorities, regulators) under some circumstances too. Heck, in some regulated environments compliance functions are &lt;i&gt;required&lt;/i&gt; not just to view your communications for specific reasons but to &lt;i&gt;actively monitor&lt;/i&gt; them for certain activity (if they fail to do so they could be liable for punishments for a due diligence failing). For instance our email is monitored to block distribution of client data, accidental or otherwise.&lt;p&gt;If you want a private conversation, use a truly private channel not an employer provided&amp;#x2F;related one.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; they&amp;#x27;ll just find another means by which to do it&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fact that people will find away around rules, restrictions, and monitoring, is not a good reason for not implementing such rules, restrictions, and monitoring in the first place.&lt;p&gt;If the private conversation is in no way a problem then, well, there isn&amp;#x27;t a problem.&lt;p&gt;If it is something that would cause the participants trouble if performed over an official channel then when&amp;#x2F;if the matter does come to light it shows malice of forethought and planning (i.e. that the participants knew they were in the wrong and took specific action to hide their behaviour rather than correct it).&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; I would quit a job&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In many (most?) industries you would not even &lt;i&gt;get&lt;/i&gt; a job without explicitly agreeing to the fact that your communications using employer provided&amp;#x2F;related services can be accessed by some functions of the organisation and distributed to external authorities, so you would not be in a position to need to quit.</text></comment>