Confidentiality Conference Registration is Open!

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Advocates are saying:

“Some survivors don’t reach out because they’re worried about mandated reporting requirements. This gets in the way of us being able to help.”

“What if no one on staff speaks the survivor’s language? How do we find a translator they feel safe with? And what agreements should be in place to protect victims’ privacy?”

“We get pressure from our community partners to share victim information. When we don’t, they get frustrated and that makes collaboration difficult.”

“We don’t have a policy for how to handle confidentiality obligations if there’s an emergency at our shelter.”

Is your agency facing similar difficulties?

Mark your calendar and join us September 9th & 10th in Atlanta, GA for the 2019 National Confidentiality Conference – Strictly Confidential: Protecting Survivor Privacy in Federally Funded Programs!

This training, provided by the National Network to End Domestic Violence and The Confidentiality Institute will help you, as victim service providers, navigate complex federal confidentiality obligations, through in-depth analysis, peer sharing, and scenario problem solving. Participants will explore the many layers of privacy, confidentiality obligations, and technology in a tangible way. Learn how to implement best practices related to privacy and confidentiality while providing survivor-centered services, and how to build strategic relationships with community partners, while respecting your information sharing limitations.

The conference will cover a variety of topics including:

  • Mandated reporting

  • Community collaborations

  • Upholding confidentiality in emergency situations

  • Navigating language access and confidentiality

  • Handling official third party demands for survivor information

  • Selecting and using databases

  • Agency use of technology

  • Implementing survivor-centered best practices

Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of these issues and will be given resources and tools to better serve survivors. Click this link for a copy of the full agenda.

Can’t wait to see you there!

This conference is OVW approved.

Please contact us with any questions. 

 

New Toolkit: Working with Survivors using Text or Chat

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Safety Net is happy to announce our new Digital Services Toolkit, filled with resources for local programs who are considering providing services via text, chat, video call, and other digital technologies. Whether your program is just curious, in the process of selecting a vendor, or wanting to improve the privacy and safety of services you already provide, this Toolkit is for you!

The resources include three sections:

In addition to written resources, we’ll be offering a series of webinars in late Spring covering these topics, as well as tailored technical assistance to answer any of your program’s questions. Contact us for more information.

Data Privacy Day 2019: Location Data & Survivor Safety

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As we mark Data Privacy Day this year, data about all of us is increasingly collected, shared, and sold: our likes, our account activity, even our movements throughout the day. This is a concern for anyone who owns a mobile phone or uses the internet. But, for survivors of domestic violence, this erosion of privacy can be a risk to safety.

It is important to be clear about the line between consumer privacy risks that anyone might find concerning, and specific risks to the privacy and safety of survivors. Weak consumer privacy protections impact all of us, and yet they can become particularly dangerous for survivor privacy and safety, if exploited by abusers. At the same time, strengthening one can strengthen the other.

For example, location data gathered from the very technology that makes mobile phones work is for sale, as Motherboard revealed in a recent article. They report that cell phone companies, “are selling access to their customers' location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.”

The risk for survivors is that an unauthorized person like a private investigator could find a survivor’s location at the request of a client who is abusive. While we haven’t yet heard about a case where a survivor was located, those who work with survivors will wonder, “What can we do to support survivor safety?”

An option we often suggest in the safety planning process, is that a survivor can turn off location sharing in their apps and in their device settings. But in this case, location data is generated as the phone pings nearby cell towers, and this has to happen for the phone to receive calls and to use data – basically to work in the way a mobile phone works.

So, our usual advice to turn off location sharing in settings won’t help. Here are other options:

  • Consider leaving the phone behind when traveling to places you don’t want the abuser to know about, and carry a second phone that the abusive partner doesn’t know about

  • Turn off the phone or put it in airplane mode (where cell signal and WiFi are off)

  • Put the phone in a signal blocking bag or container.

  • Remember that the moment the phone connects back to the cell network in a new location, the location data will be tracked.

The big picture take away is that everyone has an interest in working for stronger data privacy protections – for general consumers, and even more so for survivor safety.

Phone location is not the only risk survivors face. Here are some additional resources to increase survivor privacy online and when using mobile devices: