This is largely inspired by a post from Neil Brown on why “NSFW” is an outdated term and should be retired. I came to a slightly different conclusion, which I’d like to lay out here.

While it’s true that the definition of “work” is different for everyone and what’s safe for one workplace isn’t necessarily safe for another I think there’s a way the term could be rehabilitated into something genuinely useful for everyone.

I’ve seen a lot of people with shocking digital hygiene. You have too, even if you might not have been thinking about it in those terms at the time. Giving their work number to their kid’s teacher. Logging into their online banking from their work PC to pay a bill. Using their work email on a personal account. There are a lot of problems with this blurring of work and personal life.

Any information on a company device is accessible not just to you but also to anyone else at the company who has access to it. Features like Microsoft Recall are only going to add to the privacy nightmare: your IT department may now have screenshots of your online banking, your social media conversations, everything.

The problem isn’t just limited to other people having access to your stuff, you could also lose access to it. You could lose your job at any time. Whether that’s due to firing, redundancy or liquidation, once you no longer have access to your work phone someone who only has that number can’t get hold of you on it. Any of your personal information on your ex-employer’s email server is now inaccessible to you. Worse, the company might share your mailbox with remaining members of your team or whoever replaces you, and now they can see what you bought from Lovehoney last month or that conversation about an embarrassing rash.

Keep your work and personal life separate. Conduct your personal life on personal phone numbers, email addresses and devices. All that stuff is NSFW, because if you do it on work devices you’re not safe.