Standard email is not secure enough for our charities to satisfy data protection law when sharing the kind of very sensitive personal information​ we sometimes need to share in Safeguarding work - which is permitted by law specifically for addressing and preventing harm.

ProtonMail offers free secure email and it can be set up so that you receive an alert to your regular email any time you receive a new message in ProtonMail, so you don’t have to remember to check it. (See below for more information about this.)

It's a good idea to set up a generic email address so that when the Safeguarding role is passed on the email address remains the same.

How to set up your ProtonMail account

Go to: https://proton.me/

Click ‘Create a free account’.
Select the free option.
Insert the new, generic, email address for your Safeguarding officer.
Create your own password.
Fill in your own personal recovery email address.
Email the Safeguarding team at safeguarding@triratna.community to tell them your new address! 

Example name
safeguarding.nameofcentreorplace@protonmail.com

If you have more than one person handling Safeguarding in your centre or group (an assistant Safeguarding officer and a Safeguarding trustee, for example) the main Safeguarding officer can look after the generic account and the others can each set up their own personal ProtonMail account, enabling them to email each other securely.

We suggest this because unlike with Gmail, for example, it’s not possible for those sharing the logins on a single ProtonMail account to use it to send messages to each other (effectively the account sending a message to itself).

ProtonMail can send notifications to your usual email account

So you don't have to check your ProtonMail account, you can set it up to send one daily notification to your usual email account, on any day when you receive one or more emails in ProtonMail and haven't opened this ProtonMail account for 24 hours. Here's how:

When logged into your ProtonMail account:

• click on the cogwheel top right
• click on Go to settings
• Click on Messages and composing
• Go to General
• Switch on Daily email notifications and enter the email address you want notifications sent to.

And finally, Recovery!
To ensure you never get locked out of your account please visit the Recovery section in Settings and make sure you have done everything they suggest here.