Slack – Privacy and anonymity of Slackbot messages

privacyslackslackbotterms-of-service

Consider the following scenario. Company A develops a Slackbot for use in the Slack workspace of Company B by person C. Person C communicates with the chatbot of company A. Company A wants to ensure anonymity and privacy of these messages.

I read that Slack Plus enables "compliance exports" of all direct messages, which are supposedly private. I could not find a reference about a slackbot.

Who can read the messages between the Slackbot of Company A and Person C: Company B? Slack itself?

NOTE: My question was higher-level than SSL and IP addresses. It concerns whether Slack's terms of service give access to direct communication between users and chatbots to paying companies or Slack admins.

Best Answer

Anonymity

Since you are communication using a web-connection you need a ip-address. Ip addresses are usually not anonym because they are bound to a contract. There are some restrictions: You could use a web-cafe for example and use this way the ip-address bound to a contract of the owner of the web-cafe.

Privacy

Since slack is using TLS you have "some" guaranee that within 5 years (2 years in case of quantum-computers are used) it would take an effort of about 10 milion dolars to crack the encryption of a stanza (message). This is a raw-estimated value, I am no mathematican. Also in 5 years the algorithm might be changed to provide better encryption.

Questionable business interrest

There is no official regulation bureo for fobidden information interchange. Even if there is a official regulation bureo, you never ever be sure what and how informations are shared or progressed by slack. At the end, it does not matter if informations are shared to 3rd partys by accident or by intention - informations are shared (if they are shared) in either ways. Thats capitalism! If you ever like to have the privacy sweetspot you should use capitalists inner natural law. One level might be the law of protection against industrial espionage. A much higher level might be the use of the law of military hardware.