Leave a Trail Only When You Want to

There are times when you want to leave a trail, and other times when you don’t. I’ll start with a story that involves an unwanted trail. A criminal in Russia who had just finished serving his jail term came back to live in his native village. One day, he faced a problem – he wanted to drink some vodka, but he didn't have any money, so naturally he decided to rob a convenience store. His second problem was that there was no such a store in his village. Yet his thirst for vodka on that day was so bad that he skied cross-country for 30 kilometers (that’s 2–3 hours!) to the closest store and robbed it. Then, he jumped on his skis and headed back home. Not the smartest move, right? A salesperson looked out the store’s window, saw him skiing away and called the police. They didn’t have any trouble following the criminal using his ski trail, and they apprehended him before he’d even made it all the way back.

Russian criminals aren’t unique in making this mistake – similar cases happen often in all countries that have snow. In Canada recently, some dumb criminals broke into several cars left outside overnight on driveways and stole some valuables. The footprints they left in the fresh snow led the police right to the house where they were celebrating their success.

And sometimes snow isn’t even needed. A group of criminals who robbed a convenience store one night thought up a smart move they’d probably seen in some movie and spread washing powder they had just stole from the store over their tracks so that police dogs wouldn’t be able to follow them. In the morning, the police didn’t need the dogs, they simply followed the white powder trail leading from the crime scene to the house where the thieves and all their stolen goods were.

Yet there are cases where you may want to leave a trail, or even invest extra efforts to create one. Remember the story from Winnie-the-Pooh where Piglet left a trail of jellybeans so they could find their way back home? Or a very similar one about Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs? In some cases, in a business environment, you may want to also take some additional steps to ensure that you have a trail. Like delivery people nowadays take pictures or videos of the packages they just delivered, so they have some proof that they did their job properly. Or, say, if you deal with financial transactions, you shouldn't send money just based on a phone call - you need a written permission or invoice to do so. If your company gets audited, there’d better be some documented proof that everything was done properly. Perhaps some legal action starts – as data analyst I was involved more than once in internal investigations, where a fired employee started a formal complaint process against the company, and the management had to have enough documented cases to prove that they had good reasons for that involuntary termination. Purposefully creating a trail may be not just in the company interests, but in your personal interests, like if you expect things to go wrong and big bosses to come looking for who they want to blame and punish.

On the other hand, there are cases when you haven’t done anything illegal, yet you still don’t want your message to be recorded and shared with people you don’t know. This could be something personal you share with your work friends, such as some gossip or emotionally charged opinions.

So, let’s discuss different communication channels and their specifics regarding creating a trail or avoiding one, depending on what you want.

The safest option for keeping your communication in secret is still an in-person meeting. In the past, unless you were surrounded by security cameras, there used to be no risk of being recorded. Now, however, this threat is ubiquitous, as there are smartphones and smart speakers (and probably computers, too) actively listening to every sound around and reacting to keywords, even if no one is actively recording. If you need to discuss sensitive matters, consider not allowing phones or computers in the same room, or better yet meet somewhere outside for a walk in a park and make sure there are no phones in your pockets, and no other people (or drones) around. This might sound a bit like a spy movie episode with training for newbies, but that’s the world we now live in. While it’s a damn serious subject, there are many jokes to help us bear it, like "Everyone keeps saying I'm paranoid... This must be some sort of conspiracy."

Moving on to cases where you may or may not want to have a recording. The use of videoconferencing over Teams, Zoom or other platforms is now a common business practice. On these platforms, there is an option for recording a call that can be useful at times. It’s a good idea to record all training sessions, as you may want to revisit them. Keep in mind, though, that there might be some legal limitations for recording other people, depending on your country of residence. Most of the software for video conferencing now has some indication showing on the screen when the session is being recorded, so if you want to start recording, it’s at least polite to inform other people on the call about your intentions and get their approval. Still, even if nobody asked you and you don’t see that indicator, you can’t be 100% sure that there won’t be a record. There were cases published when people attending a video conference were secretly recording it on their mobile devices. So, if you don’t want to end up, say, on YouTube or in court with something you said on camera, just keep that option in mind.

For phone calls, I suggest following the same rules as for videoconferencing, though it might require additional steps to record a call if you’re still using a desktop phone. If you need a trail or recording, let the other person know the call will be recorded and only then start recording. If you don’t want to leave a trail, you’d better avoid using phone calls, as there is a risk that you may be recorded unknowingly. The same applies to voicemails, except they’re already recorded and thus are stored somewhere and can be easily forwarded. You can send voice messages instead of emails or instant messages if you want to include a human touch because the tone of your voice also plays an important part in communication.

Now, let me put my Captain Obvious hat on. If you think you know everything about instant messaging and emails, just skip this paragraph altogether. Once we move from voice communication of different sorts to written text such as emails and instant messaging (IM), we can be absolutely sure that all of it is recorded, and in some highly regulated businesses like financial services there are legal requirements to safekeep all exchanges for many years. While there is still some chance that, depending on the specific IM software and how it’s set up in your organization, these messages may get lost, you can’t really rely on this possibility if you don’t want to leave a trail. At the same time, unless you save messages yourself or use corresponding settings in Outlook or make screenshots, you can’t be sure that you have recorded them and thus have the trail you need (even though the company may have it somewhere). You can’t even be sure that your instant message has reached the person you sent it to - I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sent messages on Microsoft Teams only to later discover that they never went through. In some cases, in which I feel I may need some details or the date and time of this or that exchange, I save IMs as text files or take screenshots. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, so if you don’t want your text to be saved or forwarded (sometimes accidentally), don’t use IMs. Double-check who do you send your message to, as every now and then we all get or send messages where they don’t belong.

All the same equally applies to emails, except for they’re pretty much always saved somewhere for God knows how long, so if you do want to create a trail, use corporate emails, and if you don’t then don’t.

Make a habit to leave only trails that you want and make sure they’re nice-looking trails. As Turkish author Mehmet Murat ildan said “The traces you left behind are so important that a wrong trace you left behind could create a thousand more wrong traces!”?