There was a time when organizations would maintain extensive records of all communications in filing cabinets. The records would sit patiently under lock and key until they were needed for regulatory purposes.
Today, this approach seems quaint, considering how much has changed. Business conversations that once took place in meetings, by fax or over email now occur in real-time in Microsoft Teams chats. Now social media feeds, and even blog post comment sections, can be deemed important communiques with the public and official business records.
This shift to fast-paced, open, public online communication opens up a number of new challenges. But one should be of utmost concern to legal and compliance teams of regulated industries: How can organizations monitor online conversations without overstepping ethical or legal boundaries?
It’s a complex undertaking that requires multiple teams to spring into action. It’s also something that proper archiving practices and software, like Pagefreezer, can help achieve.
In this guide we’ll cover how to navigate the rules and ethics, and how to monitor online conversations.
What Online Conversations Should be Archived?
Digital archiving refers to the process of storing electronic information in a safe, organized, and retrievable manner. All highly regulated bodies, including public service organizations, financial and legal firms, are mandated to archive specific data, usually anything pertaining to official business.
However, given the reach of today’s regulatory oversight and the number of channels employees use to communicate, the flaws in the traditional manual approach to recordkeeping have become apparent. If you had to archive all of the relevant Microsoft Teams chats or every comment on your social media accounts in filing cabinets, you’d need multiple warehouses to store the seemingly endless number of files.
Moreover, the data has to be organized and stored in a way that enables easy access. This is incredibly time-consuming, considering that monitoring online conversations now involves capturing and archiving all data from many online channels. These include:
Collaboration tools
Following the 2020 pandemic, when remote work became the norm, organizations recognized the need for centralized communication for official activities. The result was the rise of collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, and even WhatsApp.
Since then, use of these platforms has grown exponentially. Microsoft Teams and Slack, in particular, are used by thousands of companies and millions of their employees. Meanwhile, all data generated on the platforms—from messages to GIFs to emojis—are subject to the same recordkeeping rules as other means of communication.
Emails
Despite the rise of collaboration tools and instant messaging, traditional forms of communication, such as email, remain highly relevant. Email archiving has been—and remains—a crucial practice to monitor online conversations.
Email archiving is crucial for maintaining privacy, as employees frequently use this medium to share sensitive information about the company’s inner workings. It’s also necessary for compliance, eDiscovery, and legal requirements.
Webpages
Organizations must also preserve all information posted on an official corporate website. This is essential for accountability and transparency. It’s also hard to do given the dynamic nature of websites.
A website archiving solution like Pagefreezer can help you automate the process of capturing a webpage for posterity, including all interactive content and forms, preserving the true user experience. These records, in turn, support compliance efforts by providing a verifiable record of past communication, content changes and updates. These records can then be used to protect intellectual property or help support any potential litigation involving claims made on the website.
Social Media Feeds
Social media archiving similarly comes with its pitfalls. Accessing data from these third-party social media platforms is a challenge. Moreover, organizations must be careful to only archive conversations that occur on their official accounts.
This means teams must implement measures to archive all communication from their own official corporate social media accounts, while steering clear of accidentally monitoring external public conversations.
Software like Pagefreezer Social Media Archiving enables you to extract data from your official social media accounts and store it in the required format with relevant metadata. This includes messages sent from official handles, as well as comments and replies posted on official accounts.
One of the biggest benefits of using archiving tools like these is that it ensures you never infringe on an unsuspecting user’s privacy. This is especially important, as several laws govern how organizations track calls, messages, and computer use. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or the National Labor Relations Act, for example, restricts the extent to which you can monitor online conversations of employees. Solutions like Pagefreezer can help you maintain compliance with these laws while still managing risk for your organization.
The Risks of Not Monitoring Online Conversations
The process of archiving internal communications requires walking a fine line. But ignoring it altogether can prove disastrous, especially for organizations subject to strict regulatory oversight.
Public service organizations, financial service provides, healthcare institutions, and legal firms are mandated by law to collect and preserve online communication data. Those who fail to do so, increase the risk of fines, litigation, or a loss of reputation.
What the Securities Exchange Commission says
The SEC is one of several bodies that have strict rules regarding recordkeeping. The Securities Exchange Act rules 17a-3 and 17a-4, for instance, outline which kinds of documents financial brokers and dealers are required to keep records of, what kind of format they must be stored in, and for how long. These records often encompass anything from MS Teams chats to deleted social media posts.
Website data is also important, as financial bodies typically use their webpages to communicate crucial information to the public.
Monitoring online conversations may involve tracking all discussions about trading strategies, regulatory matters, or transaction information among employees across various platforms. If an organization fails to monitor chats or archive messages, it can be subject to fines. When the SEC requests this content for audits, organizations must ensure all data is in the required format. This means conversations must be time-stamped, retained for at least six years, and stored in a tamper-proof manner.
In 2022, the SEC levied a combined fine of more than $1 billion to 15 broker-dealers who failed to preserve and monitor online conversations. The list of firms targeted included prominent names such as Barclays Capital Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., and Goldman Sachs & Co., LLC, each of which paid penalties of $125 million.
What FINRA says
Similarly, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is an independent agency that can levy fines on institutions that fail its recordkeeping criteria. The body exists to protect the public from fraud—and accordingly outlines rules for how firms must store and preserve all internal communications on channels they own.
This implies that a message sent between employees on Slack is just as important as an email sent out by the CEO.
FINRA has an equally broad definition of what constitutes “communication” as the SEC. It requires firms to collect messages about “businesses as such” — which may include text messages, LinkedIn posts, or even instant messages on platforms like WhatsApp.
Moreover, the agencies don’t just target big names. For example, an organization known as United First Partners was made to pay $215,000 in fines after it was found that the financial services firm lacked supervisory systems to restrict, follow up, or monitor communications conducted in internal chat rooms.
While this may not seem like a significant fine at first, for a small firm, losing over $200,000 due to something this avoidable can be crippling.
What federal and state FOIA open records rules say
In the 2013 City of Champaign v Madigan trial, an Illinois Appellate Court set a new precedent regarding the Freedom of Information Act. It ruled that all messages sent and received by elected government officials, pertaining to public business, were considered public records.
This was the first ruling in the state to emphasize that private messages could be subject to recordkeeping requests under the FOIA.
Today, it’s understood that both federal and state FOIA rules require public institutions to retain and produce records related to official business, no matter where the conversations occur. Once again, a casual Slack message or a Teams chat can be just as legally significant as a formal memo. Non-compliance, as we learned from the Illinois court case, can be costly, affecting both revenues and reputations.
How Pagefreezer Helps Monitor Conversations Online
Automated archiving tools, such as Pagefreezer, provide organizations with a practical way to meet all these obligations without being overwhelmed by manual processes.
Pagefreezer captures and archives communications across Microsoft Teams, Slack, websites, social media platforms, and more and automatically stores records in tamper-proof format, helping organizations stay compliant. If a regulator requests a deleted message from a group chat or a comment from a corporate social media account, the data is already preserved and easily retrievable. You don’t have to manually take screenshots, which are not sufficient to constitute records according to most regulatory bodies.
At the same time, Pagefreezer also helps organizations avoid legal and ethical missteps. It can monitor online conversations from approved accounts, official workspaces, and internal communication channels.
This is particularly important when balancing compliance with privacy laws, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or regional laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act.
Archiving conversations with Pagefreezer makes audits, investigations, and FOIA requests smoother and more accurate, since all records are stored in formats that meet SEC, FINRA, and federal/state FOIA requirements.
Want to learn more about Pagefreezer Archiving?
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