Updated October 2026
What about my employees' emails?
Your staff wrote most of the records a buyer wants, so plan for them. Buyers say personal details are removed, and sensitive employee records are often left out altogether. Whether you must ask or tell employees is something to talk through with the buyer, and you are welcome to bring your own advisor. How they will feel is yours to manage.1,2
Whose words these are
Most of the archive is your team talking
Emails to customers, notes on jobs, back-and-forth in Slack or Teams, ticket replies: nearly all of it carries an employee's name and voice. Spirit Airlines' archive shows the scale in a large company: about 100M emails, 500M Teams messages and 176,000 employee records.3
Buyers say they take names, emails and phone numbers out before anything moves on, usually in a secure workspace. Some go further and leave sensitive employee and health records out altogether.4,5,1,2
How people react
What the coverage tells you about staff reaction
The press framed this from the worker's side early. Futurism ran "Your Former Employer Is Selling Your Slacks and Emails to Train AI" in April 2026. Commenters on that wave of stories were largely hostile, saying the workers who wrote the messages see none of the money, while others replied that the company owns work output.6,7
When Spirit Airlines' archive was put up for sale, the flight attendants' union objected. A 30-person firm has no union, but the same question will come from somebody on your team, so have your answer ready before it does.8
Handling it
What owners can do before anyone asks
Pull HR out first: personnel files, payroll, reviews, medical notes and anything about a complaint. Buyers already tend to exclude these. Leave out private channels and direct messages if you can, since buyers agree which systems, folders and date ranges are in scope before export. Then decide how you will explain it to the team if it comes up, before it comes up.2,4,5
Watch for staff who appear in the records but never worked for you: contractors, temps, a sister company's people. Buyers ask how many business entities you run for a reason: records split across companies raise their own questions.9
One more thing to raise with the buyer: an attorney quoted by MIT Technology Review called this kind of data "legally radioactive". Ask the buyer how employee information is handled before you sign, and get the answer in writing. The quiz introduces you to the buyers we work with that fit your size, and this belongs on your first call with each.10
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
They should not be, and sensitive employee and health records are usually excluded. Pull them out yourself before anything leaves.2
No buyer we track pays employees. That gap is what commenters on the press coverage objected to most.7
The flight attendants' union objected to the sale of the airline's internal messages.8
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Do we have to notify or ask employees, current or former, before licensing records they wrote?
- How are messages about pay or working conditions handled?
- How do CCPA, GDPR, UK GDPR and state privacy laws apply, and is de-identified data still personal information?
- How are employee data, union contracts and NLRA questions handled?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?