Handling Information

Confidentiality

Everyone with access to the shared inbox, the Switchboard, faxes, or information shared during in-person help, including outreach workers who volunteer alongside their work at other organizations, signs a written confidentiality agreement before beginning. Information is shared only as needed to complete a specific active request, only with others working on that request or with the person it concerns, and never with anyone outside VOICE without that person's clear permission, given in advance.

Questions About a Person

Volunteers do not confirm whether any particular person uses VOICE. When someone asks, the volunteer offers to take a message instead, so that a person who does not want to be found by everyone looking for them can still decide whether to answer.

For example, a woman leaves a voicemail saying that she is trying to reach her brother, with his name and her number. The volunteer monitoring messages records a relay from her, for her brother, and does not confirm or deny that the brother uses VOICE. When he comes to the next session, a volunteer tells him privately that a message is waiting and gives him his sister's message and number, and he decides for himself how to respond.

Email Addresses

Before any wildcard address is created, a volunteer explains in plain language that volunteers monitor the shared inbox, and the person decides without pressure and without a deadline. No address is created without the person's informed agreement, and a volunteer helps anyone who prefers not to use a wildcard address find another option, including a private account. Closed addresses are never assigned to anyone else, so that email meant for one person cannot reach another.

Public Messages

Everything on a Beacon screen or sheet can be read by anyone nearby, and many screens can also be opened online. The voicemail greeting says so, for callers who ask for a message to be shown. Before a relay is posted on Beacon, a volunteer asks for its sender's agreement whenever that is feasible. The posting uses words a volunteer has written for it, contains nothing private, and hides every phone number and email address.

Keeping and Deleting Records

• VOICE collects only the information that a request requires.
• A relay is closed when the work is finished, or automatically after 30 days with no activity. Everything in it that could identify anyone is deleted 30 days after it closes, unless a volunteer extends that period by 30 days at a time and writes the reason in the relay. What remains is a numbered record without names or message text, which the Archive counts.
• Email in the shared inbox is deleted once the person has received it or their instructions for it have been carried out, and a fax is deleted once the person has received it.
• Messages on Beacon come down on their end date, or sooner when the sender asks.
• Backup codes are kept in sealed envelopes, and records show which accounts have stored codes, never the codes themselves.

VOICE tells the public what it keeps, and for how long, in plain language, on its Privacy page.

Accessibility

Volunteers use plain language, adapt how they communicate to each person, and arrange interpretation when it is needed. The team regularly reviews printed materials, the website, and the devices used at sessions for barriers, and removes any barriers it finds. The Accessibility page describes what VOICE offers each kind of access, and its known limits.

Accountability and Emergencies

No volunteer is expected to face a situation beyond their capacity alone. Each session, and each stretch between sessions, has a volunteer chosen to step in, as Running Sessions describes, and a relay that cannot wait is marked Urgent. When something goes wrong, the response is to understand what happened and how to prevent it from happening again. VOICE is not an emergency service, and the voicemail greeting, the website, and printed materials say so and direct people to 911 in an emergency and to 988 for a mental health crisis.

VOICE's Own Accounts

For accounts the team manages itself, such as the Google Voice account and the administrator accounts, authenticator app codes (TOTP) are safer and more flexible than text messages. A password manager that supports them, such as Bitwarden, can store the password and the authenticator secret for each shared account, so that any authorized volunteer can get a code without depending on one person's phone. This applies only to VOICE's own accounts, never to the accounts of the people who use VOICE.