Social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are changing the ground rules for managing confidential information at work.  As an employer—whether you encourage employees to use social media for your business, or whether you do not address how your employees are using social media at work—the potential for confidential information to appear publicly online is very real. 

Consider the sales employee whose public LinkedIn contact list effectively publishes your business’s confidential client list.  Or the employee that leaves and takes all of the contacts they developed at your company in their private social media account, locking you out of your customer’s contact information. 

Without your approval, an employee cannot lawfully download an employer’s confidential customer list or other trade secrets onto a hard drive and deliver it to your competitor.  But what about customer information that appears on your employee’s LinkedIn account?  Facebook page?  From a legal standpoint, copying a customer list to an employee’s hard drive is no different than taking the same customer list information in an employee’s LinkedIn account.

The law has not yet caught up with these technological developments and provides little guidance on ownership or treatment of information on social media sites.  Nonetheless, when disputes arise, courts are likely to consider an employer’s efforts to maintain confidentiality and any policies or agreements addressing the use of social media. 

So how do you use social media to your business’s advantage without losing your confidential information too?

Concerned employers are increasingly working with legal counsel to develop specific policies and contract terms that address social media, confidentiality, and protecting intellectual property in this context.  Policies and contract terms specifically tailored to social media use at your business are an important means for setting expectations and rules to protect confidential information and trade secrets.

These risks can, and should, be managed in advance—before you come across your confidential information in an internet search or before that dreaded call from a supervisor regarding your departing employee.