Our Text-to-Church phone number registry service recently implemented a mandatory requirement for our clients to have an information privacy policy on their website. This is now a standard in the telecom industry for churches utilizing texting services like ours.In light of the growing concerns surrounding information security, we recommend that every church add a simple Privacy Policy to their website.
Not only does this serve to meet the necessary telecom guidelines for texting, but it also instills confidence in individuals that their information is safeguarded and handled responsibly.
By providing this information, your church establishes credibility and demonstrates an understanding of societal concerns regarding data privacy in today's world.
Our recommendation is that you add a Privacy Policy page to your website and put a link to it in the footer and / or menu. This will make it easily accessible from any page and reinforce its importance. You can also reference it any place else that might be appropriate like information for guests or new members.
Non-negotiable to your Privacy Policy are these words,
we do not share data with third parties for marketing or promotion purposes.
This is the mandatory language telecoms are looking for, but you might expand it to further clarify and serve your people by mentioning how they can manage their information and helping them avoid phishing scams. Here is an example of a simple privacy policy page that we developed. If helpful you may use or edit any part of it.
PRIVACY POLICY
Be sure to train your staff and office volunteers on the issue of information security. Besides the page above, we developed these resources to help. You may share them as they are or edit them in whatever way is helpful for you.
- Blog post. What is a phishing scam and how to not get caught.
- Knowledge Base Article. How should we protect personal information given to the church.
You should also be aware of a couple of opt out features built into the system. These are referenced in the sample Privacy Policy above. They are mandatory for technology systems like ours.
- The first time anyone receives a text through a Workflow or Mass text, they will receive a follow up text letting them know they can text STOP at anytime. This is an industry standard people may not be aware of.
- The footer in all emails sent through Churchteams will have a Manage Subscriptions link. Most people are aware of this industry standard.
There are too many headlines these days about security breaches that compromise people's data. They want to feel confident that their church is aware of their concerns and taking the right precautions. Behind the scenes we already help you with that. It's time to make it more visible. With this article we hope to help you with that too!
