Category Archives: Email

Parish Council email accounts and GDPR

We often get asked the question: should the clerk or Councillors be using their personal email accounts for council business?

While this wasn’t a problem in the past, the new GDPR regulations mean that it isn’t advisable. There are 2 main reasons for this – under GDPR, people have:

  • The right to access all information that you hold about them
  • The right to be forgotten (ie have all information you hold about them erased)

Fulfilling both of these obligations can be difficult when the clerk or Councillors may have information buried within their personal communications. Also, if the clerk or a Councillor has left the council it will be difficult and time-consuming to retrieve or delete all the information shared as part of council business.

There are 2 ways of solving this problem:

  • Set dedicated accounts for your Councillors, using your Council’s domain name. We recommend using Webmail to access the emails as that way no messages are downloaded to the Councillor’s PC or phone. There are 2 advantages to this approach: your Councillors will have an official email address such as cllr.john.smith@yourcouncilname.org.uk; secondly you will have complete control over deleting all their messages after they leave the Council.
  • Get your Councillors to set up dedicated council email accounts using a free online email such as gmail. When a Councillor leaves the council, they can simply delete the account and all the content. This isn’t ideal as you will need to rely on them to delete the account and all the messages after they leave.

 

There are 4 main advantages to using emails that are set up to use your domain name (for example clerk@parishcouncilname.org.uk):

  • It is more official and more professional. Anyone can set up an account such as clerk.parishcouncilname@gmail.com whether they have a link to the council or not.
  • It offers more privacy – Google are able to offer free email accounts by selling user’s metadata to advertisers.
  • It enables the Council to have full control over removing email accounts when a Councillor leaves the Council – in the case of Gmail you are relying on the Councillor to delete the account themselves. This can be an issue with GDPR if a parishioner requests the disclosure of all information regarding them and the Council is not able to provide it as it is controlled by an ex Councillor.
  • In addition (another GDPR issue) – all the data from email accounts we offer is held in the UK.

Our costs are to cover the fees we pay for the server space; the time spent responding to support requests and also adding and removing email accounts as Councillors change.

 

 

 

 

 

Email safety tips

Many people fall victim to traps by criminals sent in emails. More recently, these criminals have used the pandemic as a cover story to con large amounts of money or personal data from unsuspecting victims by phishing. Here are some simple things to be aware of

Definition: Phishing. Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

  • Your bank will not discuss your private financial situation by email. If you receive any correspondence that claims to come from your bank, telephone your branch to verify it and discuss the matter over the telephone instead.
  • Don’t open attachments or click on links from anyone you do not know. If you do click on them, this could result in malware being downloaded to your device.
  • Look for spelling and grammatical errors. These messages often come from abroad.
  • Look at the email address of the sender. If it doesn’t look like it’s from the company they represent, don’t respond.

Finally, when you see a suspicious email, delete it. Put it in the bin where it belongs!

Email accounts explained

With the advent of GDPR, town, community and parish Councillors and the clerk should no longer use personal email account for council business.

There are two main types of accounts: free web-based emails such as hotmail or gmail and hosted email accounts where the email address uses your domain name eg clerk@yourdomain.org.uk.

With hosted accounts there are 2 types: POP and IMAP and the main difference between these is that with IMAP, messages are stored on the server and are accessible from anywhere and with POP accounts messages are downloaded to the user’s computer.

Hosted Accounts

IMAP accounts

Pros

  • Messages are stored on the server
  • You can access your email from any computer or device that is connected to the internet
  • You don’t need to be connected to the internet to view received messages or compose new messages, but you need to be connected to send or receive messages
  • You can use either an internet browser or an email program such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird to access your emails
  • The council has control over all email accounts and can request the removal of an account and deletion of messages if a Councillor or clerk leaves the council
  • Your email address uses your website domain name – giving a more professional appearance

Cons

  • You will need to pay to have the accounts set up and maintained
  • Most companies will charge extra for storage space for the email messages

POP accounts

Pros

  • Messages are downloaded to the your computer
  • You need a program such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird to access your emails
  • You don’t need to be connected to the internet to view received messages or compose new messages, but you need to be connected to send or receive
  • The council can request that an account be removed if a Councillor or clerk leaves the council, and that account will no longer work, although messages already downloaded will remain on the user’s computer (see Cons below)
  • Your email address uses your website domain name – giving a more professional appearance

Cons

  • You will need to pay to have the accounts set up and maintained
  • You can only access the messages on the computer that the messages have been downloaded to
  • If you request that an account be removed, messages that have already been downloaded will remain on the user’s computer unless they delete them

Free web-based accounts

Pros

  • You can access your emails from anywhere connected to the internet
  • It’s a free service

Cons