BeginnerLesson 4 of 57 min read
At work: the question that really matters
A course from the Academy: Your data, and what becomes of it
Go to the quiz ↓That's where the trouble starts, and rarely out of malice: someone pastes a document to save time, without giving it a second thought.
What leaves the company without anyone realising
An excerpt from a client contract, a table of revenue figures, a meeting minutes, source code, a client list. Pasted into a consumer-grade service, it leaves the company. Many organisations explicitly forbid it, and many people ignore that.
The three questions before you paste
- Would I send this document to an external contractor without a contract?
- Does it contain data about individuals (clients, colleagues, candidates)?
- Has my employer approved a tool?
If the answer to the first is no, don't paste.
The professional versions
They exist from all the major providers, and they change the legal picture: by contract, data is not used for training, and hosting can be guaranteed in Europe. If your company uses them seriously, that's the way to go.
The habit that unlocks almost everything
Anonymise. Replace names with "client A", actual amounts with orders of magnitude, addresses with cities. In nine cases out of ten, the request keeps exactly the same meaning and the problem disappears.
What to do now
Think about the last professional document you pasted, or nearly pasted. Run it through the three questions.
Complete the lesson
A 4-question quiz: 3 correct answers are enough, plus an exercise to practise. It opens in the Academy, on this same lesson.
Take the quiz and complete the lesson Free. With an account, your progress is saved and leads to the course certificate.The course: Your data, and what becomes of it
- Where does your message actually go?8 min
- What "being used for training" actually means8 min
- The settings that actually exist7 min
- At work: the question that really matters7 min
- Your rights, in Europe7 min