Haines Borough ratchets up online security, inadvertently blocks citizen correspondence | KHNS Radio

The Haines Borough tightened its online security in response to an increase in online scams since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That ended up locking citizen emails out of the system during budget discussions.

Dawn Drotos worked until the wee hours of the morning preparing information for the Haines Borough Assembly, but she couldn’t get it to them. The Mosquito Lake School Community Center was on the budget chopping block, and it was up to her as the chairperson to let the assembly know why it deserved funding. But her emails kept bouncing back. She tried different addresses, then different computers.

“It was a bit of a nail biter to try to appease the people who were in charge of making budgetary decisions in a timely manner,” she said.

Drotos said COVID-19 precautions limited the public’s ability to participate in the budget making process. In-person access to borough staff and assembly meetings is already limited by restrictions. She said she was pretty exasperated when the emails didn’t work either.

“I was very frustrated and didn’t know who to reach out to to help me get that information through. I ended up printing out copies of everything, and walking it down to the Haines borough offices,” Drotos said.

She said her emails to the borough had been bouncing back for over a month. And she’s not the only one: other residents⁠⁠—even Bill Thomas from the governor’s office⁠—had their emails blocked, too.

Borough clerk and acting manager Alekka Fullerton said the emails are getting rejected because the borough had to increase online security recently. 

“I really don’t want to be inaccessible,” she said.

“It’s just we have these other risks that we have to balance that people don’t seem to understand.”

The Haines Borough computer server security system has been overwhelmed with hacker and malware attacks since the onset of the coronavirus. Fullerton said its email filtering system has blocked over a million emails in the last month. 

“All of a sudden we had all these⁠ “companies” that were going to solve your COVID problem, and they were going to make sure you had all the PPE you need, and they were going to you know, give you their best practices, and here’s a webinar that you can sign up for… And I mean, there’s just all sorts of things that came through that really preyed on people’s panic with respect to this pandemic,” she said.

But those emails actually carry malware attachments aimed at infecting the borough network–the risk is these scam emails could obtain personal or municipal information. 

They’re trying to balance security and access. So emails with references to COVID-19 get blocked. So do common free accounts like gmail and yahoo addresses, according to the borough’s IT specialist. Attachments can also trigger the security system.

Fullerton said in one day the new security filtered out 14,000 emails for her account alone. She looks through them all to make sure she’s not missing any citizen comments. She said only 100 of those emails were really for her.

“I still have to deal with those hundred, but that’s okay. At least it’s not 14,000,” she said.

If your correspondence with the borough is blocked, Fullerton asks that you call 766-6400 or reach out through the “contact us” portal on the borough website. You may also post a letter or visit the offices, which are open.

One of the sources in this story, Dawn Drotos, works as the development director for KHNS. 

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