What about your employees' emails?

Customer emails, job notes, Slack and Teams threads, ticket replies: nearly every record carries an employee's name and voice. At scale, Spirit Airlines' archive was described as roughly 100 million emails and 500 million Teams messages.

Buyers say names, emails and phone numbers are taken out before data moves on, usually inside a secure workspace. Some exclude employee and health records entirely.

Reporters told this story from the employee's point of view from the start. In April 2026, a Futurism headline warned staff that ex-employers were selling their Slack messages and emails for AI training. Spirit's flight attendants' union filed an objection once the archive was put up for sale. Your 30-person firm may have no union, yet somebody on staff will raise it.

• Pull out HR material first: personnel and payroll files, performance reviews, medical notes and complaint records
• Leave out private channels and direct messages where you can
• Watch for contractors, temps or a sister company's staff in the records
• Decide what you will tell your team, and when