I know it's the schools's property. Just wondered what procedures folk took when staff left, in terms of disabling accounts for a certain period rather than deleting them straight away.Quote:
Originally Posted by localzuk
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I know it's the schools's property. Just wondered what procedures folk took when staff left, in terms of disabling accounts for a certain period rather than deleting them straight away.Quote:
Originally Posted by localzuk
I think this would be fascinating if it ever did get to court. Essentially, you have approved this personal use of the email account by allowing it to continue. I suspect a half decent lawyer would make a real meal out of that - even if policy was that staff shouldn't use the email for personal purposes, this is effectively countering that.Quote:
Originally Posted by WITCH
There's a term used in employment law "custom and practice" - basically, if you allow something to happen for a period of time then even though it's not formally part of the contract then it can be deemed to have been accepted as part of the contract. For example, if a manager regularly lets someone work from 8 to 4 instead of 9 to 5 then that person can argue that this has now become part of their terms and conditions and can insist that it remains.
It's not the same as allowing someone access to personal email and I'm definitely not a lawyer. Common sense says that you're right; a lawyer might persuade a judge otherwise ...
Considering, as I said before, the email address is the property of the school, and the school has no obligation to provide the address to their staff let alone ex staff (if they did, simply through not disabling it when they left, then the school would have to sustain a costly system for the length of the life of the account, regardless of their own wishes).. So, the account can be deleted at any time as all contents are the school's - and no lawyer would argue otherwise as there is no contract to show that it would stay open.Quote:
Originally Posted by srochford
@localzuk
The above would be true if the school was paying for a service that t had allowed to be used by the ex.employee after they left. Since this was a free service that was set up on behalf on the ex-employee by another employee of the school a lawyer might argue that it was never explicitly mentioned that the service signed up for had been done so on behalf of the school and not the individual.
The 'custom & practice' that Steve is referring to then means that the school (or an employee of the school) has to have been aware that it was being used for purposes other than work and the failure to prevent or rectify this means that it has been agreed that it can continue being used in this way.
Since this service does not contain anything in the T&C that it has to be explicitly used for work then it can be argued that the school failed to provide adequate instruction to the ex-employee.
The fact that the service may have been signed up for at any point the ex-employee, and then used for work purposes on behalf of the school, means it would be difficult to show that the school had any right to set up the service on behalf of the ex-employee in the manner that it did.
In short ... the only people that win from this are the lawyers. The providers of the service find that it is in dispute and freeze it, any emails coming in get bounced, it then gets deleted because it is frozen for more than 90 days and the case hasn't even been to court.
Ah, but srochford was replying to WITCH who was talking about the user at her school...
Just to update everyone on the outcome of the original reason for this thread - the ex-employee has finally seen sense and after their solicitor 'became aware of all the facts' the matter has been resolved....
...it might have had something to do with the content of some of the personal emails in the account that we printed out and sent to them?!
;-)
Hmm, ROFL, long time Ed IT admin, just joined to see what the site is like and I came across this.
What a storm in a teacup. If you are lucky if this user wont sign that account up for every dodgy site/mail list/spam sender on the net, and do so for your personal email addy as well. If I was them, I would!
Dont be so petty, Get a life, why on earth should you care about an old free account?
I think hanging aound with Teachers is getting to you(-:
Dav
Because it was owned by the school and used for school business? In other words, people might e-mail the account expecting to get through to the school?Quote:
Originally Posted by oldav
Dav, ur a plonker.Quote:
Originally Posted by oldav