It’s almost always a bad idea when people want to share privy information—mostly because it’s usually a ploy to get me more deeply involved in a political escapade or an unfunded project. Just recently, a faculty member offered to tell me of some privy research that was in the works, and I declined knowing. If I cannot for the life of me see a benefit to knowing, I am not going to pursue that information. I’ve been around long enough to know that knowing for its own sake is not particularly helpful, and knowing often includes unforeseen liabilities.

TMI, TMI

People do seem to play pretty fast and loose with information in general. One faculty member I worked with last year mentioned how he ended up having a colleague’s emails forwarded to his account, and he was getting private messages from his colleague’s special friend that were intimate and totally unsuited for a workplace. He had to work hard to stop that flow of messaging by this woman who thought she was reaching out to this professor’s colleague.

Others will give me all their codes to various systems. They’ll actually give it over to anyone who has physical access to their workspace because they write their codes on their telephone, on their computers, and on sticky notes posted around the desk. Or the codes they used are word forms that are easily discoverable. Yes, for real. Some are so intuitive that I unintentionally remember these codes even many years later. I am willing to bet that many of the faculty members are still using the same codes.

For many, they want to “share” not only for work-based reasons, but they want to communicate a low-level trust in you. They want to suggest that they’re comfortable in sharing some information. For many, they’ll turn the conversation around and start asking very private and personal questions back. Conversations do not go much farther after that, but it’s interesting to see the progression of information exchange.

Covering Up

This might be an IT pet peeve thing, but when I walk by computers that have been left unlocked and with privy information systems up, I get highly concerned—because anyone else walking by can jump onto the systems and have the user’s level of access that is unearned and inappropriate. Whatever is on the system then is no longer protected simply because people did not want to type in a couple keystrokes to lock their systems.

Even though my initial response to getting a message which is labeled non-confidential or for public distribution, I realize that there is a benefit in having that spelled out. In my more tetchy days, I might think it is impolitic to have those who have access to privy information sort of rub it in…but the truth is that we all hold some information that is sensitive and private, and we all have responsibilities to keep it that way. It’s better to generally have silence than to start conversations which one cannot finish.

Years ago, a faculty member made sure to de-magnetize her memory devices before having them destroyed physically. Some are sophisticated enough to truly erase all contents off their systems before submitting their computer devices for dismantling and discarding. (A majority do not.)

Doing the Un-stumble from Privy Information

It’s not so hard to back off from privy information. It’s easy enough to just decline. If there are unnecessary streams of information, it helps to just stop it there. I just use the need-to-know and gently change the topic. Excess information gets in the way of the work. It detracts from my core purposes. I invest a lot to vet research information, and some types of research are worth an eye-roll and keeping the work at arm’s length (and never citing it). That is so in the real-world as well. A lot of what passes for useful information isn’t; it’s rumor-mongering or an invitation to doing someone else’s work or an elicitation to share my own information.