Data Privacy and Skills in Using Email
In today’s information age, email service has become an indispensable communication tool in daily work, as well as one of the major communication tools. Hence, email security are becoming more and more important. For external attacks such as telecommunications fraud and malware attacks, although user’s information security awareness is increasing, the possible problems arising from the use of email cannot be ignored. In particular, for any jobs that involved personal data, you must handle them with special care. To further enhance users’ skills in using email more secure, here are some security tips:
- Before sending an email, you must review the email content, attachments, and the recipients’ email addresses;
- Before replying to email, you must confirm the identity of the sender. Do not reply to the email casually. For those emails that involve sensitive content such as money, personal information or account password, etc, please pay special attention;
- Before forwarding emails, you must understand whether the email content, which included attachments and contents of reply history, is suitable for forwarding. You can also consider extracting some necessary contents instead of forwarding the entire email. Do not arbitrarily forward unconfirmed content, so as not to spread the rumors;
- To consider carefully the necessity of mass emailing and make good use of email system resources. For more details, please refer to the “Guidelines for Mass Email and E-mail Groups“;
- Be aware of using “Reply to all”. It may cause unnecessary distortion. Please carefully consider the necessity;
- Make good use of Bcc., to ensure that the recipients are not allowed to see each other’s email addresses, thus protecting the privacy of each recipient;
- Note the email contents and attachments. Do not send too much content or attachments, especially personal information. If it contains sensitive content, you must consider whether it is suitable for transmission via email. In addition, the use of email must also comply with the policies of the University and existing local laws and regulations, as well as other laws that may need to be complied in other jurisdictions. (Please refer to the Reference information.)
- Do not rely on “email recall”! Actually, the email recall is a facilitating function that can only minimize the impact, but it cannot guarantee recalling the email you sent successfully.
In addition, users can get used to writing emails before filling in the recipients’ email addresses, so as not to send unfinished emails by mistake. If you need to select an email address from the contacts, be careful when selecting an email address as some email addresses may look similar.
* Reference information
- Office for Personal Data Protection, Macao
- Personal Data Protection Act, Macao
- Privacy Policy, UM
- Guidelines for Handling Confidential Information, UM
- Acceptable Use Policy on ICTO Computing Facilities Campus Network and Internet
- Guidelines for Mass Email and E-mail Groups
- How can I identify a phishing, fake email and websites?
- What you need to know about EU General Data Protection Regulation?
- Data Privacy in an Era of Compliance
- Other Information Security Tips