Our Commitment to Privacy
The Social Media Helpline is committed to protecting the privacy of our clients and the personal information provided to us.
We abide by US privacy laws, and other relevant contractual and legal requirements in dealing with personal information. We have a range of safeguards in place to protect information from misuse, interference, and loss, and from unauthorized access, modification, and disclosure.
This privacy policy applies to the Helpline website and services (“services”). By using the services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. On occasion, we may change this privacy policy, and when we do we will place a prominent notice on our website or alert you in other ways as required by law.
Terms:
Personal Information: specific identifiable information about an individual or entity which may be used to identify, contact or locate that person or entity (e.g. name, mailing address, email address, phone number, online user profile name).
Anonymous Information (Non-Personal): information that, by itself, does not identify a specific individual or entity (e.g. demographic information or usage data).
Why we collect personal information
The Social Media Helpline collects personal information from you (school personnel) so we can investigate concerns and tailor our support to your particular needs and circumstances. More specifically, the personal information we collect allows us to contact and communicate with you in order to:
- provide a high standard of service and care when providing you with support
- respond appropriately to help resolve the issue about which the helpline is contacted
- evaluate and report on the use and effectiveness of the Helpline’s services.
You do not have to tell us your name when using the Helpline. You may choose not to give any name or you may choose to use a different name (such as a ‘nickname’). If you choose not to provide your real name or school or district’s name, and/or not to give us relevant or accurate personal information (such as your contact details), this may affect the level of service and care we can provide to you and the outcomes you achieve. We ask for school names in order to ensure that we’re serving school communities in accord with our organizational mission.
What personal information we collect:
When you contact and use the Social Media Helpline, our data systems may automatically collect personal information about you, such as your phone number, email address and IP address.
The Helpline agent you engage with may also record personal information about you. This includes, where appropriate, creating a case file that includes any case notes we make and any information you may share with us, such as usernames, school or district names, gender, age, and incident information. This may include Personal Information and Anonymous Information.
The agent may also collect personal information about the students you contact us about. This includes the student’s school and age, as well as any pertinent information necessary to support a school in responding to a social media incident. Only screen names, not students’ legal names, are needed for Helpline service, unless a screen name includes the student’s legal name. If a legal name is included in a student’s screen name, it is the responsibility of the school or district, in compliance with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other student privacy laws, to determine whether a student’s legal name can be shared with the Helpline for the purpose of conducting its service.
How we collect information:
We collect Information directly, for example, if you send us an email for assistance.
When you visit our website, we collect Information such as your IP address or device ID passively. From time to time we may use common tracking tools (e.g. Google Analytics) for internal purposes, such as analyzing information regarding the use of our website, including traffic volume, frequency of visits, type of browser and operating system and information that may help us diagnose technical problems with the website. The information we collect to perform these functions is aggregated and does not personally identify users.
We collect this information through cookies that we or our third party service providers may place. Cookies are small data files sent by a website or application and stored on your computer or device. Cookies store information related to your browser to allow us to recognize your browser when you return to our website and remember your preferences. You may set your browser to detect cookies and let you reject them. To learn more about browser cookies, including how to manage or delete them, visit the Tools, Help or other section of your web browser or visit http://allaboutcookies.org.
How we may share your information:
The Social Media Helpline will not disclose your personal information to any other organization (including any organization overseas) without your permission unless we have to because of a law or to protect you or others from serious threats of harm.
We will share Information if we’re required to by law, or if we have to respond to a court order or subpoena. We may share it if a government agency or investigatory body requests it. We might share Information when we are investigating potential fraud. We will only share Personal Information and Anonymous Information with vendors who help us run our site (e.g., Web site and database hosting services). We will not share Personal Information or Anonymous Information with any sponsors.
Some social networking tools on our website allow you to share information with a third party social network. If you use these tools, please be aware that they have their own privacy policies, which we encourage you to read.
Please contact us with any questions about the privacy policies, collection and use practices of vendors hosting the helpline: info[at]socialmediahelpline.com.
Effective Data: Aug. 16, 2015
