Slack, Teams, Google Chat: Any safe place to complain about work online?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Workers are getting too comfortable venting on their employers’ chat apps. We tend to forget that nothing we say there is private.

Disney last week said it was quitting Slack, after a hacker gained access to an executive’s account and leaked millions of intraoffice messages. They included computer code, details about unreleased projects—and photos of employees’ dogs. It’s a good reminder that collaboration apps like Google Chat, Microsoft Teams and Slack are the opposite of Vegas: What happens there doesn’t necessarily stay there.

Your chat logs could be reviewed by IT admins, human-resources representatives, potentially even managers. And the AI that summarizes employee meetings and emails could also help management monitor the workforce. In regulated industries such as finance, companies are required to retain communication records, and even casual chats are subject to subpoena.

It’s OK to be social. You can share your puppy pics with colleagues on Slack. Your impressive GIFs and memes probably won’t get you in hot water, either.

But don’t complain or type everything that comes to mind, says Lorna Hagen, co-founder of workplace consulting firm Win Consulting. “It is not a marketplace for free expression," she says. “It is a tool used for work productivity." Before venting to your work spouse on Slack, here’s what to consider.

Employers are typically logging chats—including direct messages—whether deliberately or because it’s the default setting. If your company retains a backup for regulatory, legal or data-loss prevention reasons, even deleted conversations might live on in the servers, say workplace experts. Same goes for edited messages: If you write something problematic then