Email disclaimer law

[mavhc]

Is there an actual law that requires any kind of email disclaimer for schools? Always seemed very silly to me, if something was sent to the wrong address then no disclaimer is going to make a difference as to whether someone's going to read the contents or not.

[djrscally]

Is there an actual law that requires any kind of email disclaimer for schools? Always seemed very silly to me, if something was sent to the wrong address then no disclaimer is going to make a difference as to whether someone's going to read the contents or not.

 

Not to my knowledge. I think this is just the same kind of stuff that often gets into contracts; it's there so that if they have to go to court over something you can just point to the disclaimer rather than have to argue that it was blatantly obvious the person you accidentally sent data to shouldn't have sold it on as a mailing list or whatever.

[localzuk]

A disclaimer can't be legally binding, as it was sent without the agreement of the receiving party.

 

The only issue applicable might be that if you are an academy, you are a registered company and therefore this may apply - https://www.gov.uk/running-a-limited-company/signs-stationery-and-promotional-material

 

So, you may be required to include the company name, number and registration company.

[TechMonkey]

So, you may be required to include the company name, number and registration company.

 

This. We went from about 5 paragraphs of legalese down to two lines with company info and charity numbers when I arrived as it was all unenforceable nonsense, the usual "you must delete this email if it is not intended for you" and "the school can not be liable for any statements". I was told we had to have it to be compliant and I stood my ground asking for the policy or code we were being compliant with as it made our emails look shoddy. I think I left in a line that politely asked if you received this email by accident to let us know, just out of courtesy.

[hardtailstar]

Never understood disclaimers at the bottom of emails anyway!

 

By the time you get to read it you've already seen the contents of the email.

[ollyyllo]

These disclaimers are often very generic or pulled from a template, do they increase the chance of your mail being marked as spam?

[Edutech98]

This might be a bit of a stretch but you could argue it is to comply with Article 32 of the GDPR (Security section) in that it is a measure you could put in place to protect the data.

 

You'd look at physical, technical and administrative controls that you can put in place and a disclaimer would be an administrative control and part of your defence in depth to protect personal data.

 

It may just stop one person out of a 1000 from forwarding an email or printing it out when they've received it incorrectly etc. Although its probably the least secure control you could put in place!

[pete]

If you're applying the disclaimer *just* to confidential emails that require a disclaimer *and* you're putting it at the start of the email, it might be useful in court.

 

As it is, people are:

 

1) Sticking it at the bottom (where no-one reads it)

2) Applying it to every email, regardless of confidentiality and so the disclaimer is diluted because "Hey Bob, fancy a pint after work?" is (according to the disclaimer) just as confidential as "Dear Mrs Biggins, here's your medical test results".

 

Further reading (scroll down): https://www.out-law.com/en/topics/tmt--sourcing/email/email-notices-and-email-footers/