Employer Privacy Breach Concern – Seeking Your Insight

unknown9289392

I need some advice regarding a privacy concern with my former employer. Here’s the situation:

For context, this is a multinational company and I suspect this is my old manager (low-level) going through my personal data attempting to find revealing pictures of me, as he had made inappropriate comments before on several occasions. 

After transitioning to a new office, I returned my old work phone (a Galaxy A54) to the company. Before doing so, I made sure to log out of all my personal accounts. However, I’ve recently received notifications indicating that my Facebook Messenger account was accessed after work hours. Additionally, Gmail data requests show activity, and my WhatsApp was active in April, despite my departure from the company in February.

This unexpected activity has been quite distressing. I was hesitant to bring this up as I didn’t want to cause any unnecessary disruptions. I also refrained from discussing this with any former colleagues to avoid assumptions.

I did learn through word of mouth that my phone wasn’t given to the person who replaced me, which is against the usual procedure. This adds to my concerns about how my personal information was handled.

I know I shouldn’t have had my personal accounts on the work phone. However, it feels like leaving keys in a car: yes, it’s not ideal, but it doesn’t make it acceptable for someone to steal the car. Similarly, my mistake doesn’t justify unauthorized access to my accounts.

My personal accounts contain sensitive information, including medical records, making this matter even more serious. I’ve gathered some evidence and have reported it to HR, requesting an investigation into the potential breach of privacy. I’ve also asked for details on how they plan to prevent similar incidents in the future and to be informed of the investigation’s findings.

It’s very early in the investigation but the response from the HR representative was that I shouldn’t have had my personal accounts logged in (although they confirmed there was no policy against it). I suspect this is to cover themselves.

All my posts in any threads have been deleted from Reddit.

Do I have a case here? What steps should I take to ensure my personal information is secure and that appropriate actions are taken if there was indeed a breach? Would love to know if there’s a way I can get time stamps of how long the apps were used for.