This policy relates to the sending of emails to groups of members and customers via the BCS List Server facility.

It does not relate to individual email messages sent to members and customers in the normal course of their relationship with the BCS. Nor does it apply where emails are being sent to a group made up entirely of members of a BCS Board, Committee, Working Party or Discussion Group.

As a professional body, one of our objectives is to ensure that we provide our members and customers with relevant information and we use email for this purpose wherever appropriate. However, we are conscious of our responsibility to ensure that our members and customers are not subjected to unwanted emails and, to that end our policy is as follows:

1. We will always abide by the provisions of the UK Data Protection Act and any other relevant legislation.
   
   
2. Those who purchase BCS products and services will only be included in email postings where they have indicated a wish to receive information from the BCS.
   
   
3. For existing members of the BCS, including its Branches, Specialist Groups and Forums, we assume a wish to receive information from the BCS unless advised otherwise.
   
   
4. Members and customers may elect at any time to be excluded from all future BCS bulk emails. Such an election can be reversed by the member or customer at any time but, whilst it is in operation, can only be overridden in exceptional circumstances, requiring the approval of the BCS Registrar.
   
   
5. All bulk postings by email will bear the name of the list used together with instructions on how to unsubscribe from that list either permanently or temporarily - for example during a holiday period.
   
   
6. Bulk postings by email will never carry attachments. Where there is a need to refer to other documents we will do this by the inclusion of a hypertext link to the BCS Web site.
   
   
7. Data relating to BCS members and customers are entirely confidential and will not be disclosed to any third party. From time to time we may send details of non-BCS activities where we believe that this may be of interest - for example a conference organised by another professional body - but we will never release email details to any other organization.
   
   
8. Conscious of the fact that the normal daily volume of email correspondence is an increasing problem for many people, we will endeavour to restrict the number of bulk postings from the BCS to members and customers. To that end, we will use the weekly eBCS newsletter to carry information whenever possible, rather than a separate, single issue posting.

Any queries relating to this policy statement should be addressed to the BCS Registrar (registrar@hq.bcs.org.uk).