V past work series How about a date card we described the pitfalls of data boxes for legal entities that have a collective statutory body. We know that in the case of housing cooperatives or associations of unit owners with a multi-member committee, everyone automatically gets access to the data file, this access cannot be restricted, and it may therefore happen that the document that has arrived will be delivered before the people responsible can even deal with it acquaint.
Today we’re going to shine a light on another issue associated with data cards, and that is message retention. Data cards are not limited in any way to the number of messages or the size of their attachments. It’s not like on a desktop computer where you’re limited by disk space or cloud storage space for data storage. For data, you can actually have tens of thousands of messages, each with attachments up to a maximum size of 20 MB.
However, the time during which these messages are available to you in the data box is limited. Since misleading information on this topic repeatedly appears in the comments under the previous parts, let’s make this clear once and for all.
How long will the messages remain available in the data logs
The period of storage of messages in the data box is determined by the executive decree No. 194/2009 Coll., specifically in § 6. It applies that from the moment a user who has access to a given message logs in to the data file, the period of 90 days during which the message is available in the mailbox begins to run. Why can’t it be any user? As the owner of the data box, or rather its authorized user, you have the possibility to grant authorization to other persons. And it is possible to restrict their access rights.
This is done within Settings > Users. Here, after entering information about the relevant natural person you want to authorize, you select the type of authorization (the choice is between the authorized person and the administrator) and the scope of the authorization. You have the following options to choose from:
- read received messages
- read received messages in your own hands
- send messages and read sent messages
- view lists, history and delivery notes
- search mailboxes and
- delete messages in the vault.
You can, for example, authorize an assistant to access your data mailbox, but you can limit her access at the same time by preventing her from accessing data messages intended for her own hands.
Assigning rights to a new user
If such a message arrives in your mailbox, the authorized user will see in the list when it came, from whom and with what subject, but will not get access to the details. At the same time, for this message, the login of the authorized user will not cause it to be delivered. This is basically the result of the login of the user who is authorized to read the relevant data message.
In earlier times, before the operator of the data mailbox system adjusted the range of information sent by e-mail in incoming message notifications, this functionality was used, for example, in law firms. In order for the lawyers to find out who is writing to them and about what matter, they had an assistant with limited rights log in to the mailbox. Its inspection did not have the effect of delivery of the document, and the time limit often associated with the delivery of the given document did not start to run for lawyers.
However, it may happen that no one logs in to the mailbox. In relation to the sender, the data message will be considered delivered on the tenth day after its delivery (delivery of fiction), both in the case of public law messages and in the case of postal data messages from companies and natural persons. However, in the data file, the message will wait for its collection for 3 years [§ 6 písm. c) vyhl. č. 194/2009 Sb.].
As soon as a user authorized to read this message logs in to the data log during this time, the 90-day period starts to run when the user logs in, before the message disappears from the data log. However, it does not disappear completely without a trace. Only its contents or attachments are deleted. The envelope of such a message, from which you can read who wrote to you, in what matter, or with which number, remains available within history. Following these guidelines, you have the option to contact the sender to resend the document.
It is a good practice to store messages delivered by databox elsewhere. If you are using klient Datovka from CZ.NIC or another external tool for controlling data, or one of the file services, you don’t have to deal with anything else. These applications download the data message as a whole to the computer and save it there. You can choose in which format, where and with which name they will be automatically saved. In contrast, if you only use the basic web interface mojedatovaschranka.cz, it won’t save anything for you and you have to take care of archiving the messages yourself. Or use the Data Vault add-on paid service.
Data messages locked in a vault
The data safe ensures that your messages from the data card do not disappear after 90 days. However, Czech Post, which operates this superstructure, will get paid for it. The more messages you leave in the data log, the more it will cost you. For example, you will pay 120 CZK per year for 20 stored messages, a maximum of 200 messages will cost 1,320 CZK, and locking 5,000 messages in a safe will cost a respectable 29,500 CZK. The important thing is that you choose which messages to stay in the vault and which to delete. They should remain in the vault until you delete them from the vault (provided you have paid for the service).
You can pay either in the form of prepaid credit, or on the basis of a signed contract, on an invoice. The contract can be concluded from a volume of more than 50 stored messages, smaller capacity can only be paid by credit. The can be recharged directly from the data card. If you are thinking more seriously about the Data Vault service, it would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with it business conditions. In them, for example, you will find that in individual cases a larger volume of stored messages than the limit of 5000 can be arranged.
Because this paid service is supposed to be security guarantee (“The Czech Post is responsible for the protection of data stored in the Data Vault”), that you will not lose data messages, you may be interested in how much the operator trusts its service, i.e. what kind of guarantee it provides. You can find the answer in article 8.3 of the terms and conditions, and you will probably be as disappointed as I was. In the event that Česká pošta does not live up to its obligation and loses one of the messages (or all of them), the contractual compensation is graded according to which tariff you have. And these limits are set so disadvantageously that you won’t even get back what you paid for the service.
In the event that one or more messages are lost or damaged from the safe for a tariff with a capacity of up to 250 messages, you will receive a one-time refund of 1,000 kroner. For a capacity of up to 1,000 messages, it will be CZK 3,000, and finally, for a tariff with a capacity of 1,000 or more stored messages, the post office will refund you CZK 5,000.
Česká pošta also has a similarly limited liability for the unavailability of the Data Vault. Only if the service is out of order for more than two days, the right to a refund of the proportional amount paid for the service arises. So if for a reason on the post office side you don’t get your messages in the Data Vault for a week, you can request (no, it’s not automatic) a refund 7/365 of the amount you paid. And if you incur demonstrable damage due to damage to messages or their unavailability, the post office’s liability is limited to the amount of the price paid for the service in the previous 12 months, even if there are more such damage events.
For the Data Vault as a synonym for impregnable space, from which you expect that what you save from it will also remain there, it is a little small.
The Citizen’s Portal will also provide storage without a guarantee
But there’s no need to mourn, there’s another option that behaves similarly to Data Vault, and it’s free. For longer-term storage of messages, you can use the archive at Citizen’s portal. There you have a reserved capacity of up to 1 GB. Since it’s free, forget about any guarantee that you’ll actually find archived messages there over time.
The archive also does not care about the digital continuity of the stored messages. The electronic seal and time stamp will thus be stored in the archive at the time of archiving. Years later, when you remember the message and want to retrieve it from the archive, the electronic seal and time stamp on it may be expired.
But what you need to be especially careful about with the Citizen Portal is the automatic archiving of all messages. While in the case of the default setting, archiving will take place manually, upon request after logging into the Citizen Portal, in the case of automatic archiving, everything happens automatically. But it comes at the cost of the fact that the application will periodically connect to the mailbox every 4 hours and download incoming messages from it, thereby automatically causing their delivery, with all the consequences. All that remains is to really strongly warn against this choice. If you’re not sure you know what you’re doing, don’t do this.
