Why you can be sued if you use personal devices to access work data

Why you can be sued if you use personal devices to access work data*

https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/why-you-can-be-sued-if-you-use-personal-devices-to-access-work-data

2025-12-07

Tan Ooi Boon 

Invest Editor 

The Straits Times 

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*AI generated Summary*

• An employee was sued by his employers for downloading company data to his personal and work laptops before resigning.

• Downloading files to a company laptop wasn't a breach if the device was returned, but downloading to a personal device could lead to liability in a court case.

• He later deleted the files he took from the company from his personal laptop, but it was detrimental to his defence against the firm's lawsuit.

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Many companies have rules that ban the use of personal devices to access corporate data and all employees should do as told if they want to avoid any trouble, as a man found out in a recent employment dispute.

The senior employee of an investment firm was sued by his company after he resigned because checks showed that he had downloaded thousands of business documents to both his personal and company laptops in the same month before he left.

While any unauthorised downloading of business data can result in a lawsuit, the High Court highlighted a crucial difference between using personal and company-issued laptops when it concerns the allegation of taking confidential information.

In this case, the court found that the employee did not commit any breach of confidence when he downloaded information on his company-issued laptop because he could not retain its content when the device was returned on the last day of his job.

But the same could not be said about the information that was downloaded to his personal laptop and he could not escape liability even after he deleted all its content when he was ordered to hand it over for inspection.

Indeed, the act of purging his laptop turned out to be detrimental to his case because he also could not prove his claim that he had deleted the files before his last day of work.

High Court Judge Dedar Singh Gill noted that if the employee had deleted the company files by the last day of his employment, he would have a good reason to preserve any evidence that would demonstrate that.

Instead, the employee went on to deny any wrongdoing, arguing that even his former employer’s computer forensic experts could not show that he had retained the files beyond his last day of work.

But Justice Gill said the fact that the company did not have such evidence was only due to the employee’s “intentional and deliberate acts of deleting the applications”.

“That is akin to a thief deleting the video footage capturing his act of stealing, and then saying that no one can prove that he had stolen something. I have no hesitation rejecting this self-serving argument,” he added.

Justice Gill found it was more likely than not that the employee had retained the confidential documents in his personal device beyond his last day of employment. By doing so, he had run afoul of his employment contract, which prohibited him from retaining such data after leaving the company.

The employee filed an appeal, but the case was dismissed by the appellate court in November 2025 after the employer’s lawyer Sharon Chong successfully argued that Justice Gill’s ruling should be upheld for its clarity on the rules relating to business data.

A further hearing will be held to determine what liabilities the employee should face.

This case provides three important lessons that all employers and employees should take note of on how the law views dealings relating to company information.

Proof of data

In the past, it was probably more difficult for former employees to leave with stacks of documents because they would have to photocopy all the files and then carry them away without being seen by others.

But technology has made the act of copying business data a breeze and employees can access huge amounts of data and copy thousands of files easily, sometimes even remotely from their homes.

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Of course, not all files in the company database are confidential, especially when it concerns information that is already available online.

But when sued for the unauthorised copying of information, employees cannot demand their former employers prove that every copied file contains confidential content.

So long as the employers can show that the files contain private information that is related to its business, the High Court has ruled, there is no requirement for them to identify each and every document that contains sensitive content.

This must be so for cases that involve the copying of thousands of files, as with this employee, who was accused of copying over 4,500 files in the same month before he left.

Justice Gill noted that it would be highly impractical and extremely burdensome to expect a claimant to explain why every single document would be confidential in nature.

“Indeed, to impose such an onerous obligation would create a perverse incentive for defendants to take as many documents as possible, since that would make it harder for a claimant to plead and argue its case,” he said.

Right to knowledge but not data

If you have picked up a special skill while working for a company, you are entitled to leave and work for someone else with the skill you have acquired.

After all, employers have to do their part to reward and retain top talent and they cannot stop employees from leaving and using “the skills and knowledge in their heads”.

But the law frowns on “takers” or those who copy and take information from their employers illegally, especially when technology has made it much easier for a person to access and download confidential files.

Justice Gill said the acts of accessing and downloading confidential information would be sufficient to constitute the acts of “taking” that information.

In this case, the employee would rightly be characterised as a “taker” of the confidential information he had accessed and downloaded to his own laptop, especially when he retained the files even after leaving his former company.

Using information to file complaint

Even if you are unhappy with your former employer, you should not retain sensitive information just because you may want to make a complaint to the authorities later.

After all, doing so may land you in trouble for breaching the employment contract that you signed, especially when you cannot provide strong justification for retaining the business data.

In this case, the employee claimed he had retained the Skype chat logs after the termination of his employment because he wanted to use it as evidence to file complaints on various regulatory breaches, such as not issuing him payslips during his employment with the company.

But Justice Gill noted that it did not make sense for the employee to say this because he had deleted this content well before he could use it to file any complaint.

Similarly, the employee tried to argue that the reason he downloaded all the files from his former company’s Google Drive was that he wanted to search whether his payslips were kept within these files.

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But Justice Gill was unconvinced by his reason because, as a senior employee, he would have known what were in those folders and that they were very unlikely to have contained his payslips. Moreover, those folders could also be accessed by his then colleagues in the company.

“The defendant could not have seriously believed that his payslips, which were personal to him, were contained in these folders. Accordingly, there was absolutely no reason for him to download and retain the entirety of the information contained in the claimant’s Google Drive, lock, stock and barrel, if all he wanted to find was his payslips,” the judge added.

If there is a lesson to be learnt from this case, it is that you should take only what rightfully belongs to you when you leave for your next job.

After all, it is always more fulfilling to look ahead and rebuild your new career with your own skills than to rely on information from other people.

Tan Ooi Boon writes for and oversees the Invest section of The Straits Times.