[scolson]

Your employer owns the data, not you. The owner of something doesn't need special permission to look at it. It could be a company provided computer, email, or filing cabinet; they all belong to your work and they do not need to ask anyone to get in and look at the contents.

Even something that has a reasonable expectation of only containing personal belongings (eg. a locker) may or may not be protected from employer search as each state in the US has slightly different rules.

For work related tools, the rules are almost entirely stacked towards having no right to privacy whether a company policy exists or not.

[dugluak]

How can a personal conversation be a "data". you mean they can potentially sell my personal conversation with a friend as if its a company owned data?

[praneshp]

> you mean they can potentially sell my personal conversation with a friend as if its a company owned data

Don't do it on company slack then?

Whether or not this news is a surprise to you, you must already be separating concerns. At most competently run places emails/chat logs etc are logged.

[cmorgan31]

Assuming you and your friend both work at the same company using the same Slack Workspace and someone would be willing to pay for the data? Yes, it is a possible scenario. I have no idea why a company would offer to sell it's employee chat logs but I am sure there's a more clever individual out there who can think of reasons.