What to do if you accidentally send an email to the wrong person

Step 1: Attempt to recall the email

1. Open email in a new window.
2. Select ‘File’ at the top left of the screen.

1. Go to the ‘Info’ section.
2. Click ‘Message Resend and Recall’.

1. Select the option titled ‘Recall This Message’.

1. A window will appear asking whether you’d like to ‘Delete unread copies of this message’ or ‘Delete unread copies and replace with a new message’. In most cases you’ll just want to delete the unread copies, but there may be certain situations in which sending a replacement email is the desired outcome. Depending on your situation select the desired outcome.
2. Tick the box to ‘Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient’ as this will allow you to find out whether the recall was successful or not.

Step 2: Contact recipient

1. After completing the first step it is still vital to contact the person which you sent the email to in error and ask them to delete the email without reading it. Flag the email as urgent.
2.  This is done to ensure that if the recall is unsuccessful for any reason the email is still deleted from the recipients inbox.

Step 3: Report

1. After this, make an internal report to compliance@harperjames.co.uk (cc your line manager and clientservices@harperjames.co.uk) including details of the breach and actions taken. From here, a data breach assessment will be carried out.
2. Next steps dependent on outcome of the assessment.