Halx

Say I am an employee of a company.
Say that I have a personal Google account.
Say that I have several Google Docs spreadsheets attached to my account that I created.
Say these documents contain lots of valuable information.
Say that other people have access to these documents for reference purposes.
Say I get fired.

Would it be illegal for me to delete these documents?

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biznatch

This is sounding ugly, Halx. I have no knowledge of law, but destruction of documents that might have to do with a company's business, or show the reason for a company's profit/deficit sounds against the law.
Then again, it is your personal account, so you *should* have every right on these documents.
But if they're in any way company property, they also belong to them. I don't know..
Everything OK?

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Willravel

Common sense and google'd answers really only can do so much, and those are the lion's share of what you're likely to get here. Please contact an attorney just to protect yourself. Hypothetically.

BadNick

To me it seems that you own the Google account, but not the company information in it. If you were paid to create that data, it belongs to the company unless you have a contract stating otherwise. If it was part of your job to work with that data and you had it stored in your own files, you have to give it back to the company if you break up. To me it's sort of like using a company tool and taking it home; they still own the tool and you have to give it back when you part ways. If you gave the latest copy of these files to the company, then I'd say you have wiggle room to destroy your "working copy", and the burden would be more on them to have kept their "official" copy.

Redjake

At my work it would be. Any documents like that are designated as property of our company. You would be destroying company property.

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Frosstbyte

If someone made the documents for work, it doesn't matter where he keeps them. That work belongs to the company, not to the person. If I did work for my law office on my laptop and was fired and deleted those documents without providing the office to a separate copy or record of them, I'd be in a giant pile of shit. I imagine some hypothetical person who got fired would be, too. Vengeance sounds fun, but it doesn't usually work out very well.

ratbastid

You may have a standing document that details your responsibilities regarding confidential or sensitive information, commonly referred to as a "non-disclosure agreement". If so, a paragraph in it probably requires you to take the same steps to safeguard the company's privileged information that you would to protect your own.

Baraka_Guru

You stated in the thread title that this is a question of business ethics, not business law.

Legally, you might have the right to delete them. It depends on the conditions of the documents' creation and any or all agreements with the company to which the documents pertain. It also depends on any or all input the others may have had to the documents in question. I don't really know about the laws regulating these things.

Ethically, you shouldn't delete them if others use them as resources to help them do their jobs. You should never burn your bridges in business because you never know who might hire you or give you a reference down the road. Hindering others from doing their job is never the right thing to do unless there is a legal or moral issue at stake. Deleting documents out of spite, I would say, is generally unethical.

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Poppinjay

It used to be a fairly common practice in radio if somebody found they were going to be fired to take a magnet to all the carts (what radio stations played before digital came along). The magnet pulls off the little flecks of sound on the tape.

It's illegal, though I never heard of anybody being prosecuted.

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Cynthetiq

I believe it depends on the data.

If the data was proprietary to you, for example your own formulas, contacts, sales tricks, information, while they could consider it "their" tool, they do not own people's contacts and rolodexes.

As far as the access, well, it's a matter of "context" of how come they need to have access to them and it's not on a company server/network/workstation, so that no one has control of it in the manner that you are describing.

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skizziks

If you created them, they are yours, unless you created them "for the company" which would make it thiers. If they are yours, you can do whatever the hell you want with them. Even if they are so fantastic everyone in the company uses them and references them to make thier lives easier, unless those docs are property of the company, they are yours to do with as you please.

As Baraka said, this is about ethics. If you got fired unjustly, got screwed, whatever, and have no loyalty to the company, nor care about the other employees, then delete them. The company wont fold because you deleted some useful information, so its not like you are killing innocents. Baraka is right about burning bridges. I´ve only burnt bridges when I never ever ever cared if I needed those bridges again.

The_Jazz

Legally, I have no idea.

Ethically, it would be wrong. And it's pretty clearly wrong. And I think you know that.

However, if there are no backups of these files, you are under no obligation to share them with your former employer, assuming that they are entirely your work and that they knew where they were hosted. If you created them while entirely as function of your job but they chose to allow you to host them in a place where they cannot access them, you could ethically (note, still not talking legally) ask for compensation for transfering the files back to your former employer. Because it would be work related at a job you no longer have. Just like if you had a deposition for a former employer, you would also be compensated.

Knowing more of the actual situation would clear some of these issues up, but it would also be enitrely understandable if you chose not to share.

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Baraka_Guru

Thinking about this more: It's a small world; I'd hate to be known as "that guy who deleted all those fucking files." Things like this can leap out at you in the future when you least expect it.

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Amaras

I alawys show up too late to the good stuff. What those two said.

Ethically WRONG, period. Nitpicking legally? I don't know. Also not an avenue
to explore.
I keep on coming across people I knew 15 years ago. It's killer to set up a bad
rep. I don't know why the hypothetical "I" person got fired. DO NOT exacerbate
an already tough situation.
I would email all of those who referred to these docs, with copies of
said docs attached, and state that in 24 hours they will be deleted as it is "I"'s
personal account. Legal, I don't know. Ethical, yes. I think.

Good luck to "I".

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jewels

Who are these people? Your superiors?

I don't know the corporate legalities, but it would seem your personal Google account is your personal account. You created the spreadsheet with your own data, n'est-ce pas?

For me, you haven't given appropriate detail. Was this created with mal intent? Are the others accessing this info via your personal account for lack of network space or something else?

Without those specifics, I'd have to assume the Google stuff was your creation for your personal purposes and deleting it would be interpreted as an action designed to protect the company you work for, and not to hurt them. :shrug:

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biznatch

Google Docs allows several people to access and change documents that are hosted on their servers, if the account-holder (hypothetically Halx) allows it.

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new man

Ok, lets make this more personal.

You fire your accountant. He stores all of your personal and financial records on his proprietary software. He deletes your records right before you file for taxes. Is this fair?

You want to move your IRA from broker A to bank of B. Your broker deletes your records delaying your ability to easily move your assets. His actions cause delays that lead to losses of 20,000 dollars in the marketplace. Would you sue for the difference?

If you work for a place and conduct business that is related to the company, then your work is owned by the company. Don't want that, make your own company. But if you owned a company and paid someone to do work, and they did not do it, or destroyed the work, then they stole from you. They were compensated for work and they did not do it.

Aha, found this article that talks directly about this idea from msn careers:

Marie Lupe Cooley thought her job at a Jacksonville, Fla., architectural firm was in jeopardy after she saw a help-wanted ad in the local newspaper that appeared to be seeking candidates for her position.

She decided that if she was being fired, she'd exact her revenge, and came into the office on a Sunday and erased years of important data on her employer's computer system.

Cooley's story received local and national media attention earlier this year, and her act of sabotage is a good lesson for disgruntled workers everywhere. Her impulsive decision landed her in jail.

There are a number of workers out there like Cooley who may feel slighted by their employers. During tough economic times, no one's job is safe.

But disgruntled employees, take heed: If you deliberately sabotage your employer's computer system or do something that could undermine a firm's business, you could end up in jail or ruin your chances of ever being employed again.

Take, for example, the Boeing worker at a suburban Philadelphia plant who in May cut electrical wires on a $24 million Chinook military helicopter because he said he was upset about an impending job transfer. The vandalism caused more than $110,000 in damage, according to federal prosecutors, and the former employee now faces 10 months in prison or more.

As for Cooley, she was ultimately sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to pay restitution to her former employer.

"She felt she was wronged," says a source close to Cooley's case. (Cooley could not be reached for comment.)

Another disturbing fact: A survey by security firm Cyber-Ark that found 88 percent of information technology workers would take sensitive data with them or abscond with company passwords if they were fired.

People, this is illegal! This goes way beyond stealing Post-it notes.

Perceived injustice in the workplace
Some corporate security experts point to an uptick in such cases in the last year or so.

"It's a pretty common problem right now and it's only getting worse," says Andrew Serwin, chair of the privacy, security and information management practice for law firm Foley and Lardner.

Serwin, author of "Information Security and Privacy: A Practical Guide to Federal, State and International Law," thinks the reason behind the rise in corporate sabotage is that so much information is stored electronically. "Now you can come in with a thumb drive or your iPod and download a ton of information," he says.

"In a lot of these cases of sabotage and aggression at work, it's a person trying to restore justice to a situation," says Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire. Some workers who are fired or not given a raise may feel it's an injustice that can be remedied only via payback.

And today's tough economic environment, which can lead to disgruntled workers, doesn't help. "With the possibility of downsizing, and the number of people fired or laid off, the potential goes up," he says.

There seems to be a lot of injustice in the workplace these days. Workers are being laid off by the thousands while the top brass at those same firms get big bonuses and raises. Earlier this year, a congressional committee even felt the need to scrutinize the big pay packages given to the CEOs in the mortgage sector, which has seen thousands of jobs slashed.

"People see that and think: 'They could have paid my measly salary,'" Harvey says.

Most of the employees who decide to carry out sabotage do it before they actually get escorted out of the building, says Dawn Cappelli, senior member of the technical staff at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute's CERT program, where her team looks at cyber-crime committed by current or former employees or contractors.

"We had one case in a telecommunications company where an employee planted a logic bomb and let it sit there for six months until he found another job," she explains. When the logic bomb -- also known as a time bomb, software code written to do something malicious to a computer system -- went off, it disrupted service for the company's customers and wreaked havoc until the IT folks figured out what it was.

It's hard to know exactly how many sabotage cases like this have occurred, Cappelli says, because most companies -- about 74 percent -- never report such breaches. It's bad for public relations. Investors and customers may look at the breach by an insider as a sign of lax security.

That reluctance to report the sabotage to law enforcement means that many of these cases don't end up in court or jail time for those workers who perpetrate the sabotage, experts say.

But, as the electronic age has made it easier for workers to sabotage an employer's business, it's also made it easier for prospective employers to check you out.

The last thing you need is to be known in the industry as a worker who took revenge on his or her managers, says Barbara Kate Repa, author of "Your Rights In The Workplace." "You risk your own work reputation. The work world is a small world, and that kind of bad karma is going to follow you around and muddy your tracks for good."

Talk to your manager
If you suspect layoffs may be coming or you were not paid a bonus you were expecting, Repa suggests sitting down with your manager to discuss the matter, rather than stewing in anger.

And do it without whining, she adds. Come to the table with some suggestions of how you can make things better, for your department and yourself.

From the manager's perspective, it's a good idea to tell workers exactly why certain actions are being taken so they aren't left wondering "Why me?" That just gives employees "room to spin conspiracy theories," Harvey adds. If they know it was just part of a bigger cost-cutting measure, they're not as likely to take it personally.

We all get angry and frustrated. "But some people's snapping point is lower than others. How a person handles things varies," Harvey explains.

In many cases of sabotage, Cappelli says, the employees feel remorseful in the end. "Everyone we talked to said, 'If I had to do it again I never would have done this.' "

But, she adds, some workers may be predisposed to this type of behavior. They tend to have one or two common personality characteristics: They can't take criticism, and they typically don't get along well with colleagues at work. "Something happens that sets them off; pay problems, layoffs, etc.," she adds.

There's nothing wrong with a little revenge daydream, Harvey says. "It's when you get to the point where you're planning out the steps that you're going to take to get that revenge that you probably reached the point where things are getting out of control."

3GPositive

Your company relys on storing mission critical data in a personal Google account? One could say it serves them right.

Change the password and wait for them to complain. Take your time responding because you are busy looking for a job right...but eventually email them the docs. Think of the other employees that work there.

murp0434

Maybe this is overkill at this point but i definitely agree - you never know when you may need someone who you've worked/known in the past for help, for a reference, etc and you never know how far-reaching your actions are.



Does sound fun though, doesn't it?

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Amaras

Not too bad, if revenge is THAT important to you.

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