Privacy and Data Use - eAdventist's policies

Protecting the security and privacy of the personal information stored in eAdventist is our top priority. 

Privacy Policy

eAdventist's Privacy Policy was voted by the Union Executive Secretaries (April 6, 2003) and requires that:

1. The personal information in eAdventist belongs to the church and the conference - which is responsible for all of its churches.
2. The eAdventist team may only share the personal information in eAdventist with the express authorization of a conference officer or pastor. This applies to both data files and eAdventist user accounts.
3. Authorization
   1. A letter on conference/church letterhead, signed by a conference officer or pastor, sent by postal mail or fax
   2. An email directly from a conference officer or pastor
4. User accounts
   1. Conference and Church accounts are administered by the conference clerk and authorized by the Conference Secretary
   2. Union and Division accounts are administered by the eAdventist team and authorized by the Union or Division Secretary

Privacy Practices

The eAdventist team also follows and promotes the following standard privacy principles, which have become part of most national and state privacy laws:

1. Only collect personal information by lawful and fair means, with the knowledge and consent of the member.
2. Only use personal information for the purposes for which it was collected, except with the consent of the member.
3. The member may request the church clerk to provide a copy of their personal information stored in eAdventist at any time.
4. The member has the right to have their personal information corrected if it is:
   1. inaccurate
   2. out-of-date
   3. incomplete
   4. irrelevant
   5. misleading

What is "Personal" information?

eAdventist considers the following kinds of information to be personal and personally identifiable, whether the person is a member, nonmember (e.g. family of a member) or a contact (e.g. visitor, interest):

• Name
• Address
• Phone number (landline or mobile)
• Email
• Birth date
• Baptism date
• Marriage date
• Death date
• Geo-location
• Photo

Although the following kinds of information are not considered personally identifiable, eAdventist still considers them personal:

• Age
• Postal code
• Marital status
• Church or company the person belongs to
• Membership status (e.g. member, nonmember, removed, missing)
• Occupation
• Retiree status
• Ethnic class
• Transfer history

What is "Public" information?

eAdventist considers the following kinds of information to be public:

• Organization information, including:
  • name
  • address
  • geo-location
  • email, phone
  • tax number
• Public officers (names only), including:
  • pastor
  • conference/union/division president
  • principal/vice-principal/head teacher
  • college/university president
  • camp ranger
• Summary information - average, total or distribution of personal information for a group of people (no individual information included). Some examples are:
  • Number of baptisms in a church or conference
  • Number of members in a ZIP code or Postal Code
  • Median age of members in a church or conference
  • Number of members in 10-year age groups (i.e. 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc.)

Personal Privacy Options

eAdventist includes several privacy options that allow individual members to further limit the visibility and use of their personal information:

• Unlisted email
• Unlisted mobile phone
• Unlisted phone (family)
• Confidential address (family)
• Include in printed church directory (family)
• Include in myEADVENTIST online church director (family)
• Allow "promo mail" (family)