BUPA disappointment

Devizes2008

Wanted to join the company scheme and was given a form to fill in by my HR team. To submit the form they gave me a BUPA email address. Most people would not think twice and submit it that way, BUT should you?????
The form contains the individual's National Insurance Number and other very personal information and of course the vital medical history. 

Would you send this kind of information in an open letter? No???? Why sending it via email, this is exactly the same thing and much worse because the whole world can get to the details on the form.

Why is BUPA allowing this? Why not having a form on their website where the content wouldn't need to travel around the world as an open letter?

Shame on BUPA to endorse this kind of data submission!!!

Toothsmith

Doesn't it depend on the security of the recipient's email server? Not all are equal. 

I would guess that a company like BUPA would have pretty stringent data security measures in place. You could ring and ask them if you're worried though.

Devizes2008

No, it doesn't depend on anything that BUPA does or has. My emails are sent from my PC to their servers. The link between my PC and theirs is open, no encryption. 

That's the thing... if they were to offer to fill in a form that is made available on their website then all that would be happening within their servers, so it would depend their server security only.

I did call them and they don't offer anything apart from sending the form via Post, like in the good old days :-), which is what I ended up doing.

Undervalued

Devizes2008 said:

No, it doesn't depend on anything that BUPA does or has. My emails are sent from my PC to their servers. The link between my PC and theirs is open, no encryption. 

That's the thing... if they were to offer to fill in a form that is made available on their website then all that would be happening within their servers, so it would depend their server security only.

I did call them and they don't offer anything apart from sending the form via Post, like in the good old days :-), which is what I ended up doing.

Given that at least three letters addressed to me (perfectly normal house / address / postcode with no unusual difficulties) have gone astray in the last three months I wonder if that is really any more secure. In the "good old days" it maybe was.

Most financial organisations offer some form of supposedly secure messaging via their website for registered customers and I agree that BUPA and similar should probably do the same.

Devizes2008

just an update: I have now joined BUPA as a member. However, they had to scan the paperwork to create digital copies and something must have gone wrong as info was missing in the digital format, so they had to call me. But all good from my side now.