Ask HN: Does your org/employer delete Teams/Slack messages?

2 points by nkrumm 2 years ago | 2 comments

University of Washington recently implemented a new retention policy [1] that deletes -- without exception -- all 1:1 or group chat messages in our enterprise MS Teams after just THIRTY (30) DAYS. They claim this is to improve privacy, compliance, efficiency of search.

Does your organization/employer do the same?

[1] https://itconnect.uw.edu/tools-services-support/software-computers/productivity-platforms/microsoft-productivity-platform/teams-chat-retention-project/

mikequinlan 2 years ago |

I haven't read the policy but deleting 'without exception' could make the university in violation of warrants or other legal requirements to retain data. Destroying evidence is usually a felony.

ano-ther 2 years ago |

No, because there's industries that have longer mandatory holding periods.

U of W's reasoning is funny though:

Compliance = "nobody can use our chat history to claim that we said something non-compliant". Likely the main reason.

Efficiency of search: this being MS Teams, the search is completely unusable regardless of how long the chat history is. The results only show the find itself and no context at all. Good luck finding that file that your coworker shared a while ago over Teams.