Privacy Policy for Text Message-Based Surveys

Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS) is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring the confidentiality of your personal information. When you speak with one of our helpline attorneys, we may ask you to participate in a short text message-based survey to determine how we are doing and how we can improve.  Survey participation is voluntary, and surveys are only sent to callers who agree to participate.  This privacy policy outlines how we collect, use, and protect the information you provide to us when you respond to text message-based satisfaction surveys.  

1. Information We Collect:
- Responses: We collect the responses you provide to our survey questions to gauge your satisfaction and improve our services.

2. Use of Information:
- Improving Services: We use the information collected to understand our callers’ needs and preferences, enabling us to improve our programs and services.

- Grant/Contract Applications and/or Compliance: We may share anonymized and aggregated survey results with grantors, funders, and other stakeholders.  
- Communication: Your contact information may be used to follow up with you regarding your responses or to provide additional information.

3. Data Security:
- Confidentiality: We are committed to keeping your personal information confidential and will not sell, trade, or rent it to third parties.
- Limited Access: Access to your information is restricted to authorized personnel who require it to fulfill their duties.  However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our services is at your own risk.

4. Data Retention:
- Survey Responses: Your survey responses will be retained as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. When we have no ongoing legitimate need to process your survey responses, we will either delete or anonymize such information.

5. Third-Party Services:
- Service Providers: We may engage third-party service providers to assist us in conducting surveys. These providers are contractually obligated to protect your information and may only use it for the specified purposes.
- Legal Compliance: We may disclose your information if required by law or in response to a subpoena, court order, or other legal process.

6. Your Rights:
- Access: You have the right to contact us to discuss your survey responses and request corrections if necessary.
- Opt-out: You may choose to opt-out of receiving surveys or communications from us at any time by contacting us.

7. Children's Privacy:
- Our surveys are not directed to individuals under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

8. Changes to Privacy Policy:
- We reserve the right to update this privacy policy to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. Any updates will be posted on our website with the effective date.

9. Contact Us:
- If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices or this policy, please contact us at help@tals.org.