Avoiding Catastrophic Mistakes in Slack: A Cautionary Tale

Imagine a scenario where you open your work Slack on your phone to DM with a few colleagues. You don't see the chat in the list of active DMs on your phone, so you select all of the participants individually to continue the conversation. You're then prompted with a question: 'Do you want to include the entire chat history?' Without thinking, you accept, only to realize that you've shared your entire DM history with the first person you selected for the chat into the group DM. This might sound like a nightmare, but it's a real situation that recently happened to a Slack user. This blog post delves into this issue, explaining how it occurs and providing tips on how to avoid it.

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Understanding the Issue

This issue arises due to a glitch in Slack, not a feature. It typically happens when switching between desktop and mobile Slack. If recent conversations (including group DMs) don't immediately appear in your mobile DM list until the app syncs, the app treats this as creating a new group conversation. That's why you get the chat history prompt—it's asking if you want to include your private chat history with the first colleague into this new group.

Preventing the Problem

There are a few ways to ensure this never happens. First, manually pull down to refresh the app. If that doesn't work, fully close and reopen the app. That should result in your DM list being up to date, which obviates the problem. Also, if you see the 'Do you want to include the entire chat history?' prompt for a group DM you know already exists, remember to click no. And even for a new group DM, think very carefully about what might be lurking in that history before you share.