The Folly of Blogging

This post is being written not only for the purposes of this class and its current students, but as a warning for students that may follow.

We learned last night that our friend and classmate, Cindy, was terminated from her job because she posted confidential information concerning her employer's intellectual property litigation. Apparently, Cindy's employer discovered her post and asked/forced the removal of her post and then terminated her employment. This also led to Cindy dropping the class and perhaps ending her hope of finishing the M.A. PSML program at Webster.

I, and probably the rest of the class were shocked to hear this. We all pretty much agreed that the information that Cindy posted seemed to be "public information", but if not, certainly did not seem to be damaging information to her employer. However, if the document she used to pull this information was labeled as confidential as we must assume, then it seems her employer may have been necessarily concerned.

Other than the obvious concern and sadness this news regarding Cindy brings, there was something else that came to my mind immediately. During other classes in this program, I and others have used examples or ideas from our employment in class projects (i.e. research papers and in-class presentations). This has been done at the prompting/suggestion of the class instructors. I realize the blog is a much more public offering than the other projects in this program have been; however, I doubt that our employer's legal teams would make too much from this distinction. Personally, I bring this up because I am not 100% sure of what detailed areas I work in are proprietary/confidential and what are not. I do have a pretty good idea of what would fall in those areas, but I couldn't say in all certainty which side of the coin each specific detail would be considered. I doubt any of us that are currently in this program could say so either.

To sum up my thoughts about this, I do not plan on using anything from my work environment as examples or material for projects in the remainder of this program. I feel that unless I had these projects given the OK by my company's legal department, I could be overlooking something that may cost me a lot.

I encourage my classmates and program instructors to comment with their thoughts.