Hi UL,
The committee’s decision to move the UL group email list from Yahoo to Google was approved by the committee and by yourselves at the AGM. The reason we have done this is that we have recently been getting a lot of spam and some people were struggling to join using invitations. Google groups allows us to add members directly. We have done this because we thought it was in the best interests not to bombard people with too many emails – so everyone can start posting immediately!
I realise this is a very long email, but here is a quick summary:
- The new google group is now active and any emails will now be sent through this.
- Email to send messages to new group:
- New committee email address:
- If you are not receiving emails from the group, please check your Spam or Junk folders on your email
- All other emails and contacts remain the same as they previously were
- Archives from Yahoo will shortly be made available via our website: www.ulscr.org.uk
- If you wish to know about the Data Protection Act or the T’s and C’s for Google groups, please look below.
Data Protection Act issues…
We have sought advice from the Information Commissioner’s Office (http://ico.org.uk). Their website states they are:
“The UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.”
Following our enquiry, we have been advised the following:
“Under the Data protection Act 1998(DPA) the society would be seen as a data controller. As the society is data controller they have to comply with the eight principles of the DPA. Your enquiry concerns the first principle of the DPA which covers fair and lawful processing. As the society agreed the transfer and the members were entitled to vote on the matter, it would likely that the first principle has been complied with.”
Based on this advice, we are now happy to proceed with the move to the new Google groups.
Here are Google groups’ terms and conditions: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en-GB/policies/terms/regional.html
If you wish not to be part of this new group you may remove yourself by emailing this address:
ulscr+. You may also contact me or anyone in the committee:
https://www.ulscr.org.uk/contact/ and you will be removed. If you do not remove yourself or ask someone to remove you, we will assume that you wish to remain on the list and be kept informed of society events and news.
To access the Google Group email archives, you will need a Google Account. If you do not already have one, you can set one up at https://accounts.google.com/SignUp, and you can use an existing email address to do this.
The committee have been on a new Google Group over the last few months and this has worked very well for us. Most of us were still on the old Yahoo Committee emails too so we could catch anything that came through. The committee’s new email address is: .
Inevitably we are going to have teething problems to begin with but we hope to solve these without clogging up your inbox too much.
If you wish to post to this new group then please use the following address: “”. This address is a forwarder from our own hosting company to Google groups, this aims to give us double protection as we can use our server spam filtering as well as Google.
If you are not a member of the Google group – you may still post to the list: “”. However, all your emails will be moderated by an administrator. The same rule applies to the committee group: .
Logging into Google to see the group online should be simple – if you have any issues with this please let us know.
To enable a clean switch over, everyone on the Yahoo Account (apart from a few on the committee) will be removed. Our Yahoo Account will not be deleted just yet as we need to catch any emails that come through to our old address. These will be forwarded by a member of the committee to ensure no correspondence is lost. We will then ask the sender to update their address book with our new address.
We have managed to extract our Yahoo Group archive which includes: databases (quotes), emails (over 2,000 items), documents (including minutes) and some photos. Some email attachments sent to the group before 2009 (ish) were not archived by Yahoo and so are not recoverable. If anyone has them in their personal email archives we’d be grateful if they could please be forwarded to anyone on the committee or myself (). What we have extracted however, will be stored and made available for viewing using “BuddyPress” (please see below).
At the moment, the committee are trialling a new system to keep this information on our own website (https://www.ulscr.org.uk/) using something called “BuddyPress”. It works a little like Facebook, you create an account, then wait to be approved and then you can access documents (such as minutes from past meetings) in groups that have been created. You may also create your own groups and upload your own UL related documents. These pages are hidden to anyone who hasn’t registered. We will keep you updated with our progress on this.
If I have forgotten anything or you think of any problems then please let me know. As I have directly added you it should mean you don’t need to take any more action other than setting up a Google account if you do not already have one (you only have to do this if you wish to view our Google email archives!) or removing yourself (see instructions above) if you so wish.
Please note the new email address:
…I think that’s everything. As I have said before, please be patient with us if we do have any problems and we’ll try and fix anything ASAP!
I hope we can make this transition as smooth as possible.
Thanks,
Jacqui Brown