What I Learned From the Sony Hack

As everyone now knows, Sony was viciously hacked in an attempt to stop their movie ‘The Interview’ from being released on December 25. Sensitive and private (and embarrassing) emails have been released on an almost daily basis. Just a couple days ago, the studio decided not to release the movie after the hackers threatened violence on moviegoers. The politics of whether or not Sony should release the film and the implications of countries engaging in cyber warfare are important–but I’d like to focus this post on the released emails. More specifically, what I’ve learned from the stolen emails.

My biggest takeaway is actually quite simple: write every business email like the world will be reading it. The hackers released tons of emails written by Sony employees including the head of the studio as well as emails written by actors and producers across Hollywood. And with the release of those documents we learned: who can be difficult, who can be mean, who can be racist, and who needs to maybe step back from their computer forever.

But here’s the thing. Not one of those people thought what they were writing would ever be seen by anyone but the recipient. When they made tasteless jokes, they had no idea anyone outside the distro list would ever see it. And even though the hack was out of their control (and absolutely NOT their fault,) their words are now in public for everyone to read and analyze.

It reminds me of when I accidentally hit reply instead of forward and inadvertently sent a note to the wrong person. Or all the articles that have been written about how employees accidentally send emails to their entire company instead of to a colleague.  It’s pretty embarrassing. The bottom line is, in both cases (hacking and accidental emails,) if they’d never been written, there’d be no embarrassment. The next time you’re about to send a snarky email, take a minute and make sure you’d be comfortable with everyone at your company reading it. Or your parents or friends. Or the entire country. You just never know who’s going to see what you’ve written via email. It’s an important lesson for those entering the workforce and a nice reminder for the rest of us.