This post is made for very large portion of business population. We are talking about 90% here. Companies with very small number of desktops.
It this is you please read on. You are (very likely) using Office (365 or not). And you are categorized as SME , and thus very likely, you have no services of this mythical creature called: Administrator.
You have nobody but yourself. And this good blog 🙂
What is this then all about? This is all about one (yes one) little tiny email compliance detail you do not want to forget.
Erasing your trash and your junk emails.
This is the most overlooked important thing one can (not) do to stay within the boundaries of emailing by GDPR requirements.
In organizations who can afford (Office 365) Administrators this is automatically executed (by utilizing the Policies feature).
But you can do this one very simple and effective measure. One can admittedly do more but this is the absolute minimum and this covers more than 75% of GDPR emailing requirements. (don’t hold me to this number, I wanted to type 99%).
Erase your email trash and email junk manually.
Why manually? Beside the fact you do not have an administrator, it is your chance to check if anything that should not be erased will not be. And second to remind you continuously about all the spam creatures one can accumulate in very short period of email time. In other words as a method of keeping required standards on the required level.
Ok then. Therefore and at last how exactly is this “magic” to be done?
Open your OWA browser page. The easiest and quickest way to get to it: just type OWA in your browser search. The very first entry in the result list will be (most likely) “Webmail Login – Office 365“. Or just click HERE.
When inside it, and after using your email and password, please copy paste this link to your browser address line, or just click on this one here:
https://outlook.office.com/owa/?path=/options/mailboxcleanup
You are now presented with all the folders you can clean. But the most important two are on the top, thankfully and not without a reason. Erasing all the emails from them keeps you and your business very much inside the boundaries of GDPR.
So please go ahead and click the down arrows on the far right of each of them. Context menu pops-up and you select “All”. Here is mine:
It says 0 items, because I am a good boy and I already erased them all. Most people have thousands (or more, much more) emails in there.
After you do select “All” the deletion process starts. If this is first time you do it it will take few minutes. Do not wait around, just do this for both “Deleted items” and “Junk Email”.
And you are done! Believe it or not, you are now almost completely inside GDPR. At least as your emails are concerned. You are using Office 365 Exchange Online and your “Deleted items” and “Junk mail” are clean.
And that is the single most troublesome issue with emails. These two folders (Trash and Junk) must be kept at their absolute minimum. Please do make sure you repeat this refreshing “exorcizer” once per month.
GDPR improves your business life. It is not a threat.