Why It’s a Bad Idea to Use Your Work Email on a Personal Phone

While we’re all for efficiency, there are some boundaries that should not be crossed for everyone’s benefit. One common mistake is using your work email on a personal phone to subscribe to online services like Netflix or shopping accounts. Incorporating employee cybersecurity training can help address this issue, as this habit, while seemingly convenient—or even automatic—can lead to lasting consequences.

The reason you shouldn’t use your work email for personal purposes is a simple one:

 

You are no longer working for the company! Now what?

Seriously, we want to know: what’s your plan if your employment comes to a sudden end?

Let’s say that you were using your work email on a personal phone for an assortment of personal reasons—maybe you used it to subscribe to a few subscription services, or you used it to log in to a favorite online retailer or two… maybe one named after a really big river in South America.

Potential for distraction aside (which is itself a whole other can of worms), tying your personal life too much to your work life can have some long-term issues. Let’s say you did choose to use a work email to sign up for personal service, only to leave that job sometime later.

Regardless of the reason you leave—whether you or your position was terminated, you found another job, whatever—one of the first things that any responsible company will do is to deactivate your accounts from their system. Neglecting to do so would be a cybersecurity failure on their part. Good luck trying to recover a forgotten password when the authentication is sent to a work email on a personal phone you no longer have access to.

 

Businesses Should Actively Discourage Private Use of Professional Email Addresses

There are plenty of reasons why a business should prioritize employee cybersecurity training to prevent users from using their professional email accounts for personal purposes. We’ll quickly run through the list:

• Corporate accounts are readily available online in many cases, making them easy targets for phishing and spam.
• On a related note, it becomes a lot easier for a cybercriminal to find online accounts that are tied to a business email address and use what they find to craft more effective spear phishing messages—ones that are tailored specifically for a particular recipient.
• Many people still reuse passwords across many different websites and services, so if a website is breached that an employee’s work email was used to access, there’s a good chance that the password for your corporate email address could be stolen with it.
• A vast majority of password reset requests go to the registered email account. If your requests, which should ideally come to your personal email account, go to your work account, your emails may be subject to Freedom of Information Act Requests. This is especially true if you work for the Federal or State Government.

 

Cybersecurity Over Convenience

While convenience is tempting, your processes should prioritize your business’s security—especially when it comes to using a work email on a personal phone. Employee cybersecurity training can play a crucial role in educating your team about password best practices and the actual importance of this kind of work/life balance will be key to shoring up this particular security issue. and the actual importance of this kind of work/life balance will be key to shoring up this particular security issue.

 

Strike the Balance with Point North Networks

Turn to us for help with keeping your team members from inappropriately merging their work lives and personal lives, as well as our assistance in optimizing the rest of your processes. Point North Networks can help with employee cybersecurity training to ensure your team understands the critical importance of maintaining security. Give us a call today at 651-234-0895 to learn more.