Email Disclaimers

[zag]

I'm just setting up our Office 365 email disclaimer which has been relativley painless.

 

Does anyone have some good example text to write on school emails?

 

I was thinking something like this

 

**** School is not responsible for any personal opinion expressed in this e-mail.

[localzuk]

Ours is currently

 

Whilst the sender, as an employee of *council*, makes every effort to ensure accuracy of content, the Council cannot accept any liability for claim, loss or damage howsoever arising from the reliance on or use of this information. All e-mails and replies may be subject to monitoring in line with the Regulatory and Investigatory Powers Act. If you have received this e-mail in error and are not the intended recipient you should not act further other than to delete the e-mail and inform the sender

 

Although, we're sorting out getting it changed as we're an academy now.

[zag]

Thanks, thats really usefull although I think I'll cut ours down to make it a bit shorter.

 

For anyone who wants to do this on Live@edu/Office 365 you can follow these guidelines.

 

 

=================

 

You may configure email disclaimers through the Exchange Control Panel in the Microsoft Online Portal. You will need to create a transport rule for your disclaimer, which may be done as follows:

 

1. Within the Exchange Control Panel, Select the “Mail Control” option on the right hand side of the screen.

 

2. You should be in the “Rules” sub-section.

 

3. Click the “New…” button.

 

4. Select the conditions under which you want the disclaimer applied in the “If…” drop-down. In my Case I wanted to apply to all mail messages which is at the bottom.

 

5. Select “Append a disclaimer to the message…” in the “Do the following…” drop-down.

 

6. Click the “Enter text…” link and enter your disclaimer text in the resulting dialogue, then click “OK.”

 

7. Add Any other actions or exceptions.

 

8. Enter a name for your new rule.

 

9. Click “Save.”

[bodminman]

or you could use something like CodeTwo email disclaimer which is more flexible and is free! (If you are happy with them having a smaill link to the website in the disclaimer)

[elsiegee40]

Ours currently

 

This e-mail and any attachments are strictly confidential and intended for the addressee only. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email. If you are not the intended recipient(s), you must not use, retain or disclose any information contained in this email. Any views or opinions are solely those of the sender and do not necessarily represent those of . This e-mail and any attachments are believed to be free from viruses but it is your responsibility to carry out all necessary virus checks and accepts no liability in connection therewith.

[localzuk]

or you could use something like CodeTwo email disclaimer which is more flexible and is free! (If you are happy with them having a smaill link to the website in the disclaimer)

 

Does that work with Office 365/Live@Edu?

[bodminman]

lol - sorry I was distracted whilst reading the initial post and just thought it was an Exchange disclaimer query.

 

(I'm going home!)

[sonofsanta]

For any external e-mail...

 

This message is personal. The opinions expressed are in no way an official view of [sCHOOL] () neither should they be considered as an indication of policy unless explicitly stated otherwise.

 

Only gets attached to outgoing emails in Exchange 2007.

[AyatollahPies]

Email signatures are a waste of time. Legally they mean sod all.

 

So i'm told.

[AngryTechnician]

An opinion I share. Some food for thought on this: Legal disclaimers: Spare us the e-mail yada-yada | The Economist

 

Lawyers and experts on internet policy say no court case has ever turned on the presence or absence of such an automatic e-mail footer in America, the most litigious of rich countries.

 

Many disclaimers are, in effect, seeking to impose a contractual obligation unilaterally, and thus are probably unenforceable. This is clear in Europe, where a directive from the European Commission tells the courts to strike out any unreasonable contractual obligation on a consumer if he has not freely negotiated it.

[localzuk]

Email signatures are a waste of time. Legally they mean sod all.

 

So i'm told.

 

Not entirely true. They can be binding, but it hasn't been tested in court yet I don't think. This site has some insight into this Email disclaimers and the law | Weblaw.co.uk

[K.C.Leblanc]

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

 

Confidentiality Notice: This message and any attachments are private and confidential and may be subject to legal privilege and copyright. If you are not the intended recipient please do not publish or copy it to anyone else. Please contact us by using the reply facility in your email software or by phoning [our number] and then remove it from your system.

 

Disclaimer: Although this email and attachments have been scanned for viruses and malware, [us] accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising from the receipt or use of this communication.

 

Monitoring of Email: [us] may monitor the content of email for lawful business purposes.

[zag]

Yes totally agree about the legal side of it but its more about having a common brand in the school and reminding staff its their work email

 

EDIT: Ohh I like the bit about monitoring emails, might make people think twice before sending stupid messages

[Arthur]

An opinion I share.

I was thinking of exactly the same article when I saw this thread. Disclaimers are a waste of time IMO (not to mention disk space). No one bothers to read them!

 

If schools insist on adding disclaimers to each e-mail, should they not add them to the footer of each letter that gets posted too?

[pcstru]

Copyright does not need to be stated, but it is probably the only legal basis you have to prevent dissemination of an email. Course by the time you act, it will be too late. You can try and persuade the reporter that the social services report detailing a family history of violence and sexual abuse sent by mistake by some tired member of staff to a member of the public and then passed on to the local rag, should not be disseminated further (and it probably won't be), but that's not going to save anyone's arse.

 

"these are the opinions of the author and may not be the opinions of the school" : well, ok, but how exactly is someone meant to work out if they are or aren't the opinions of the school. And what about when the Head sends an email where she doesn't want any doubt that these are very much the opinions of the school.

 

"if you have received this email in error". Wouldn't it be good form to actually apologise! "If you have received this Email by mistake, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience. We would be grateful if you would advise us of this mistake by return and delete the email from your system". I mean it's not their mistake, yet they are suddenly faced by a disclaimer making legal demands which while usually risible, also usually carry an implicit threat of legal action should they fail to comply. That's just rude.

[PiqueABoo]

Mmm.. suspect e-mail disclaimers are the world's current greatest example of why you should distrust consensus.

Everyone doing it because everyone does it.

::screams::

 

If disclaimers are any use then given a decade of fairly extensive e-mail use we would surely have some case-law to back that up. All there really is of course that oft-cited case in the wrong dismissing the influence of a disclaimer over other substantive message content. The only thing the specialist megaquid lawyers seem to agree on is that it might, and that's an untested might, be useful to put a brief confidentiality notice at the start of messages that are genuinely confidential i.e. warn me before I read it.

 

As above (@pctru)if you really have to have one then your very best bet is to appeal to my good nature (i do have one honest!): "please", "would you kindly", warn me about being subject to FOIA etc. If I ever get anything sensitive from a public org with "must", "prohibited" and their ilk then it's going direct to a red-top and not least the ICO because I just hate that lazy facist tat... as in who the Heck do you think you are to give me orders? And I'm reasonably sure the ICO latter will tend to focus on the internal policies and procedures you don't have to help prevent it happening in the first place whilst contemplating a fine... "doh, I thought putting some threatening psuedo-legalese on every e-mail anyone sends would.." isn't going to cut it.

Edited June 17, 2011 by PiqueABoo
tpyo

[GrumbleDook]

I love the email disclaimer discussions and I wish that had remembered to record a seriously good chat @ZeroHour and I had on this.

 

Yes, there are lots of stuff out there that shows the limited legal backing or no legal backing (under DPA especially) that disclaimers provide. However, the use of disclaimers is not limited to, or even specifically directed towards external recipients. The greatest use of disclaimers is to support internal policies or sections of employment contracts. To external contacts it is a clear warning of the expectations or legal / contractual obligations on the sender. The sections about "notify the sender" informs the recipient of the first port of call should the email contain sensitive information (sensitive in the sense of DPA, Copyright or other contractual) and it is the sender's duty to report the breach internally (as per the the company / school policies and the employment contract of the sender).

 

If you are putting disclaimers in then you *must* ensure that it is backed and supported by policies for staff. The downside of this can be that this can often be mis-represented as a way of introducing areas which will allows schools to provide fresh ways of disciplining staff, rather than what it is ... clearly pointing out existing legal and contractual obligations. Some unions will dig in at this point ... others take a more pragmatic view and appreciate the work to clarify things.

[john]

Ours is as follows (in size 1 grey font thus doesn't appear as epicly huge on the email but is very readable)

 

________________________________

This E-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, you must take no action based on them, nor must you copy or show them to anyone; please forward to: postmaster@schooldomain and highlight the error. Every effort has been made to ensure that this message (and any attachment) does not contain a virus or Trojan Horse, but you are advised to virus check any attachment before opening it. School Name cannot accept any liability for damage as a result of a virus being passed on, or arising from alteration of the contents of this message by a third party.

________________________________

School Name is a registered Charity No: Charity Number , Full Postal Address

Tel: 01234 567890 | Fax: 01234 567891

________________________________

Visit the school's Website at http://www.schoolwebsite.com

 

The fact we disclaim is in the Internet / Network / Email Polcies adopted by the governors, and the automated systems in Exchange also put on the role that a user has within the establishment, thus it puts my name and IT Manager automatically on all my email from my account.

 

Student Emails are slightly different, they have that same basic disclaimer but has the extra bit that says this email is from a student at School Name to ensure that people outside of school can see and realise that they are dealing with a student thus should be more careful if its anything contractual etc... as we have had that before!

[zag]

Anyone know how to change the colour of the disclaimer in Office 365? It seems to be only plain text.

[ZeroHour]

Every effort has been made to ensure that this message (and any attachment) does not contain a virus or Trojan Horse, but you are advised to virus check any attachment before opening it. School Name cannot accept any liability for damage as a result of a virus being passed on, or arising from alteration of the contents of this message by a third party.

That protects you from nothing btw. If your school sent a virus (and not spoofed email) your liable regardless.

[john]

That protects you from nothing btw. If your school sent a virus (and not spoofed email) your liable regardless.

Interesting as that disclaimer was written with and checked by a group of solicitor for a local charity I volunteer for (as I swiped it back for the school) as all mail is stamped including via headers to show it left us clean (assuming the gateway AV is up to date) as well as auto stamped by the AV on it's way out of the door as it were so interesting view on that ZH. I'm not saying I fancy being challenged in court for anything but its fairly common practice and is in many software vendors T&Cs if you actually read them as its nearly the same wording at times that state that X's program was virus free when it left them but hey what occurs now isn't there issue and if it screws your PC not there problem.

[GrumbleDook]

The disclaimer does not protect you or remove your liability. What it does do is attempt to show that you have taken all reasonable action on your part (presuming you do what it says in the disclaimer) and that you have also advised the recipient (intended or otherwise) that they should take all reasonable action on their part.

 

It is all about reducing the amount of damaging which can be attributed to you and mitigating the risk. It does not absolve you of legal liabilities, but is a robust defence. That is what you pay serious money to solicitors for, after all.

[mavhc]

I put a link to a disclaimer on our website, 0 people have ever visited it

[ZeroHour]

Interesting as that disclaimer was written with and checked by a group of solicitor for a local charity I volunteer for (as I swiped it back for the school) as all mail is stamped including via headers to show it left us clean (assuming the gateway AV is up to date) as well as auto stamped by the AV on it's way out of the door as it were so interesting view on that ZH. I'm not saying I fancy being challenged in court for anything but its fairly common practice and is in many software vendors T&Cs if you actually read them as its nearly the same wording at times that state that X's program was virus free when it left them but hey what occurs now isn't there issue and if it screws your PC not there problem.

 

Pretty much what GD said, also context makes a difference too but really it attempts to limit how much you could be on the hook for rather then meaning your not on the hook at all.

[PiqueABoo]

presuming you do what it says in the disclaimer

 

Presuming it says you do anything as opposed to giving people orders and making interesting statements that suggest you think you are above the law.

 

I appreciate your angle here, but disclaimers describing what lovely things an org does are not exactly common in amongst the one's I've had over they years.

 

I put a link to a disclaimer on our website, 0 people have ever visited it

 

..apparently bored people have researched this a few time and shown most folk do not read them when they're way down at the bottom of those mails, which I think obliges everyone+dog to stick them at the top if they're really trying to demonstrate they've done everything reasonable..

 

it is a robust defence.

 

A robust defence is one where we've got existing case-law to make it robust, surely?

 

 

If your school sent a virus (and not spoofed email) your liable regardless.

 

I may be way off here, but have occasionally wondered how you might pursue a 3rd-party for their negligence in sending you a virus, when in principle that can only cause damage because you were equally negligent. Are courts likely to be that impressed by pots calling kettles..? Still it's probably at least £10 a word, so...

 

--

 

I was wondering: Is the liability insurance you can get for all of the stuff people reckon they can disclaim away a complete rip-off, or a sage precaution?