In 2020, Sunland North’s Board voted to move our Board and Committee accounts to a managed, corporate mail system, residing in the Internet domain sunlandnorth.org. As many of our public services as possible will fall under this umbrella, with Board mail addresses of:
President@sunlandnorth.org
Vice-president@sunlandnorth.
Secretary@sunlandnorth.org
Treasurer@sunlandnorth.org
Member-at-large@sunlandnorth.
And major committee addresses of:
Architecture@sunlandnorth.org
Landscaping@sunlandnorth.org
Maintenance@sunlandnorth.org
Information@sunlandnorth.org
webmaster@sunlandnorth.org
These addresses will be published on our sunlandnorthownersassociat
Why the change?
Integrity
Sunland North has all-volunteer management and workforce. As individuals rotate in and out of positions, it is essential that both our owner-members as well as our volunteers know that they are communicating with an official HOA account, and receiving information from an official HOA account.
Continuity
As individuals move in and out of positions, it is important for incoming volunteers to have as complete a picture of past activities as possible, and having access to all relevant email messages helps ensure corporate memory.
Security
Because corporate accounts are owned by the HOA, and managed by the HOA, it is easy to reassign accounts to new volunteers if the previous volunteer resigns or is unable to perform their duties. The electronic security measures for corporate accounts are also more robust, with more advanced anti-virus and malware protections, and more paranoid anti-spoofing protections.
Integration
It is easier to integrate corporate accounts into our public services. A form for landscaping on the Sunland North site, for example, can be set up to send messages to landscaping@sunlandnorth.
Protection of volunteers
Using personal email for HOA business exposes volunteers to increased spam (as the addresses need to be publicized), fraud (as criminals attempt to use the addresses to either compromise the volunteer, or use the address to defraud others), spoofing (sending messages that appear to be from the HOA but are not), and other criminal behavior. Personal email may also be seized for review in legal disputes if a personal account is used for HOA business. In 2018-2020, over 200 different, fake Sunland North addresses were created on Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, Yandex, HubSpot, etc., most of which “pointed” to users in Russia, China, Mexico, Morocco, Belarus, India, and Brazil.
Technical benefits
Not all email accounts are “equal.” Many commercial ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have underfunded their email infrastructure, resulting in overtaxed servers, outdated software, and poor security. For example, the industry standard today is for IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) indexed, database-driven mail server software that is end-to-end encrypted, but most ISPs offer POP (Post Office Protocol) mail server accounts with limited storage, no inherent indexing, and stored as “plain text” that can be read by anyone.
Helping with the change
The sunlandnorth.org accounts are hosted by Google, and should be read regularly. Any mail dealing with HOA matters received on a private account should be forwarded to that individual’s sunlandnorth.org
If you need help in setting up a corporate account on your computer or phone, or assistance in learning how to get the most from the account (the accounts also provide online word processing, spreadsheet, slide show, calendar, forms, and other services, plus 30 gigabytes of online storage), the Board can host Zoom sessions for hands-on training, either for individuals or groups.
The sunlandnorth.org accounts are web-accessible, and can be read using a browser on an iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, or Windows machine.
For phones and tablets, Google has its own, free app, Gmail, available for iPhones and iPads,
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/
And for Android phones:
https://play.google.com/store/
For desktop users, Kiwi for Gmail is an app that can be used in place of a browser for reading sunlandnorth.org
You don’t need to use the apps, but some find them easier than using a browser.
Questions? Please contact the Sunland North (Division 17) Secretary at secretary@sunlandnorth.org.