Contacts and groups

Module 7: Your address book · Reading time: 9 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson you can explain which address books the webmail keeps and how autocomplete works, and you can use a group without leaking addresses.

Key concepts: contact, personal address book, Collected Recipients, Trusted Senders, autocomplete, group, Bcc, data minimisation

Why an address book, if the webmail remembers everything anyway?

Many people hardly use their address book. They type a few letters in To, the webmail fills in an address, done. That works, but the address the webmail suggests doesn't always come from a list you have kept yourself. And that is exactly where things go wrong: an old address of a customer, a typo you once made, or two people with the same first name.

A contact is a card with details about one person or organisation: a name, one or more email addresses and, if you like, a phone number, postal address, organisation or a note. The address book is the collection of those cards. In the webmail, the address book is stored on the server, just like your mail. It belongs to your mailbox and to the way you log in (lesson 1.3): if you suddenly log in differently, for example with the Server field filled in, your address book may look empty.

Three address books, three purposes

When you click Contacts, you see not one but three address books on the left. Each has its own job.

The difference between the first two matters. Collected Recipients is an automatic memory. It remembers everything, including that one address with a typo that made your mail bounce, and the old address of a colleague who left long ago. Your personal address book is a list you keep clean yourself.

Trusted Senders has a different function. It isn't about autocomplete, but about external images. By default the webmail doesn't load images from the internet, because senders can use them to see when you open their mail (lesson 2.2). If you choose to always trust a sender, they are added to this list. In Settings > Preferences > Displaying Messages you can then choose to show remote resources from trusted senders straight away.

Autocomplete: handy, but check what you pick

When you type a few letters in To, the webmail searches your address books for names and addresses that start with or contain them. You get a short list and pick one. This is called autocomplete.

An example. Emma Smith (emma@example.com) has a customer called Ahmed (ahmed@example.net). A year ago she once emailed him by mistake at ahmed@example.org, an address that isn't his. That mail didn't bounce, because the address happened to exist. Since then there have been two Ahmeds in Collected Recipients. When Emma types "ahm", she sees both. If she picks the wrong one, a quote goes to a stranger.

So, two habits:

• Put people you email often in Personal Addresses, with their full name. Then autocomplete shows you a recognisable name instead of just an address.
• If you see a wrong or outdated address in the list, delete it from Collected Recipients. Otherwise the webmail will keep suggesting it.

A quick way to add someone: open a message from them, click their name above the message and choose Add to address book.

Groups: one name for many addresses

A group is a label you stick on contacts, such as "Board", "Suppliers" or "Team". A contact can be in several groups, and deleting a group doesn't remove the contacts themselves. In the image you can see a group under the personal address book, with the three dots for the group actions.

When you mail a group, the webmail puts all the addresses in the group into the field where you choose the group. That is the point to think about carefully. If you choose the group in Recipient (To), everyone in the group sees the addresses of all the others. For a board of five people who know each other, that's fine. For a group of customers who don't know each other, it's a problem.

Email addresses of people are personal data under the GDPR. If you send an email to forty customers with all the addresses visible, you have given those addresses to everyone else. That can be a data breach (lesson 3.1). The solution is simple: choose the group in Bcc. Then everyone gets the email, but nobody sees the other recipients. Put your own address in To, so the email has a proper recipient and you get a copy yourself.

Tom, Emma's colleague, emails the studio's suppliers every month. He has a group "Suppliers" with twelve addresses. He chooses the group in Bcc and puts tom@example.com in To. If a supplier replies with Reply all, that reply only goes to Tom, because the other addresses weren't in the email.

Pitfalls with groups

• The daily limit. Every recipient counts towards the number of emails your package may send per day, including Bcc. A group of a few hundred addresses can reach your limit (lesson 8.4). For a newsletter to a large list, use a newsletter service: it also handles unsubscribing and keeps track of who you are actually allowed to email.
• Recipients who don't want it. A group isn't a mailing list. There is no unsubscribe button. If someone asks not to be emailed any more, really remove them from the group.
• An outdated group. A group stays the way you made it. People who leave stay in it until you remove them. Check your groups now and then.
• Spam reputation. Lots of mail at once to addresses that no longer exist produces lots of error messages. To receiving servers, that looks like careless or unwanted mailing.

Keep what you need, no more

The GDPR has the principle of data minimisation: you don't process more personal data than you need for your purpose, and you don't keep it longer than necessary (article 5 of the GDPR). For an address book, in practice that means:

• Store what you need to reach someone: name, address, perhaps a phone number. A customer's date of birth or home address usually doesn't belong there.
• Tidy up. A customer from five years ago whom you no longer email doesn't need to be in it.
• Remember that Collected Recipients also contains personal data, and that this list grows by itself.

This isn't legal advice. What your situation requires depends on your organisation and your purpose.

In practice: how it works in the webmail

You'll find everything under Contacts in the main menu. To create a group, use the three dots next to the groups and then Add group; you put contacts in it by dragging them onto the group. When writing, you choose a group by typing its name in To, Cc or Bcc, or with the button with the little figures next to the field. The steps are in the Roundcube manual (8.1 and 8.2). Which addresses the webmail remembers is set in Settings > Preferences > Contacts. Other webmail, such as Gmail or Outlook.com, works in a similar way: there, groups are often called labels or contact lists.

Summary

• The webmail has three address books: Personal Addresses (your list), Collected Recipients (automatic, everything you mailed to) and Trusted Senders (for external content).
• Autocomplete also suggests old and wrong addresses; put regular contacts with their full name in your own address book and delete wrong addresses.
• A group puts all its addresses into the field where you choose it. People who don't know each other go in Bcc.
• Large groups count towards the daily limit; send a newsletter with a newsletter service.
• Only keep what you need in your address book, and tidy up.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise D7.1: Create and use a group. In your personal address book, create three contacts (for example yourself, a colleague and a friend, or three made-up people with addresses at example.com) and a group with a name of your choice. Put the three contacts in the group. Start a new email, put your own address in To and choose the group in Bcc. Look at what appears in the Bcc field. Don't send the email: save it as a draft or discard it. Then answer: (1) What did you see in the Bcc field after choosing the group: the group name or the individual addresses? (2) Suppose one recipient chooses Reply all: who gets that reply? (3) Look in Collected Recipients: is there an address that is wrong or outdated? What do you do with it?

Further reading

Where steps in the webmail are described, they apply to the WebOké webmail; other webmail works in a similar way.

• Roundcube Webmail 8.1: Adding and finding contacts
• Roundcube Webmail 8.2: Creating groups
• Roundcube Webmail 10.1: The most important settings
• Limit for sending mail
• Free course: Staying safe online for business owners 8.2: Data breaches and the duty to report
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj
• Using Bcc and privacy: emailing a group of people who don't know each other