Companies that worry about these things do something about these things.
Companies do not worry about contact lists.
They do nothing about it.
They do worry about client lists.
They do protect these.
Contact lists are transient tools everyone creates all the time and which have no intrinsic value to the company. They don't give a damn what happens to them.
The client list is the life blood of the company.
Take this and you will be stealing. If you can access it.
Maybe that's where the difficulty lies?
Let's not pretend companies don't worry about trivia or that if
they consider something stealing or detrimental to
their interests they can not or will not do something about it.
The trivia pursuit departments, management's attack dogs are IT and HR.
These people thrive on nit-picking mind numbing trivia. They love lists and petty instructions.
If management said: "Contact lists. Guard them. Good doggies." then you wouldn't be able to take a contact list.
If you want to stop terrorists travelling between countries, or carrying bombs about then give the responsibility to IT and HR and take it away from Homeland security.
IT is perfectly adept at interfering with all sorts of actions from playing games, searching for jobs, watching porn etc.
If its on your PC/laptop/workstation a copy is on the server and on backup somewhere. They have a copy of everything whether they want it or not.
They can and do track activity.
HR can easily both do something and make it clear this is a no-no.
They can make visible their intentions. They may be sloppy about succession planning (people dying without permission) but they are well versed in exit/termination procedures.
The list the company worries about is its client list.
This is a list of clients who have accounts with the company and which details their order history, contains all their account information and transaction records, bank details, D&B reports etc. It is commercially sensitive.
The clients on this list have financial status. Money is invested in them as well as them being a source of money.
Access to this list is limited in any case.
It is controlled by the finance director and his minions and they are the ones who create it and maintain it and guard it with IT's help. Unless you have log on rights to the finance directory on the server you ain't gonna get near it.
Accessing this list and copying it would be stealing.
But if you are thinking about the sort of contact list we each generate in our day to day dealings with customers, that is something else.
This list is of trivial importance to the company.
(Of course, we still have to find out if the law says it is stealing. I note, Mike_the_Engineer, you have not provided, as Cass did, some references for your claim that
"Taking customer lists is STEALING and has been upheld in most courts of law!! . and if you possibly refer here to the client list and not a contact list?)
Pretty well anyone in a company with dealings with clients will have their own contact lists that they make themselves.
Of course people use Outlook etc to create such lists.
Of course the company then ends up with copies. But they are not sensitive and it is debatable to what extent the company owns them and you do not. Since the company always has a copy who gives a damn?
This is not
the client list.
When I left my last company, Management had an HR list of termination actions.
Lots of trivia.
We only struggled with the line about returning PPE.
PPE was what HR called it. (My manager was not about to ask HR what it meant and he simply ticked the box. I don't think anyone is in a rush to tell HR to write "safety Gear" which is what everyone calls it. PPE, in the context of all their nonsense about swipe cards fuel cards and other trivia meant nothing).
Nothing about contact lists.
All they required of me was that I copy everything company related on my lap top into a special folder on the server (Like they didn't have it already. Every day you docked at the office or remote accessed the server they backed up new material and sniffed for illegal software, unapproved downloads etc.).
IT love this stuff.
They'll suck up files like a Dyson in the dust bowl and their motto is probably adapted from JAWS "I think you need a bigger
boat server", yes. The more they can suck in the more they can spend on new kit.
Note that I said copy, not transfer and they didn't want to wipe anything on my laptop. In fact, since they wanted my newish Dell laptop back for someone else they transferred it all to an old Toshiba for me to use till it was time to surrender it. Including
my contact list.
So please, let's be sure we are all talking about the same thing and let's get real here.
JMW
