At Missio Nexus, we were impressed by the speakers who were using…
to allow audience members to respond to a talk anonymously. The speaker just puts the link on the screen and waits for feedback from the audience.
Of course, one could potentially make the argument that PollEv.com servers are capturing your cell phone number (if you use the text response feature. But there’s an easy fix for that: If you’re uncomfortable handing out your cell number to a 3rd party, just use your cell phone’s web browser to respond. Even so, handing your cell number over to a 3rd party doesn’t hand them a credit card or any other personal information anyway, so the risk is actually fairly low anyway. Either way, PollEv’s privacy policy goes beyond the norm anyway. And their CEO is a trusted friend of known friends of Brigada. (He responds below, in fact, to an earlier version of this post.) Obviously, their business could be sold someday, but it doesn’t sound like that’s their goal. And even if they sell, they’ve pledged to go to the mat to persuade the buyers to maintain ethical privacy. We wish more apps went to such lengths! Well done, PollEv.com! Please forgive our earlier doubts about the downsides of this polling app. It’s a cool feature with lots of promise for immediate feedback — especially if users can utilize their web browsers to respond. We apologize for any hurt caused by our original skepticism, which was written only from the vantage point of someone who looked at the app from a superficial level. Now that we have these assurances, we can’t wait to try PollEv.com ourselves!
Well, this is disappointing.
I’m Jeff, the CEO of Poll Everywhere. I work with our lawyers to craft the Terms of Service and Privacy policy, and I’ve done so for 9 years. I’ve always taken a lot of pride in how we go out of our way to craft pro-consumer (pro-audience) legal terms.
This statement in your post is absolutely misleading: “The downside of this app is that it captures every single phone number for PollEv.com to use for spam.”
This is wrong for two reasons: First, over two thirds of people just respond via the web or via our app. We don’t collect their phone number at all. Second, we have never spammed. Spam is absolutely antithetical to the entire purpose of our company.
Let’s discuss why we actually collect phone numbers: We have to in order to prevent voter fraud. We can’t prevent people from voting twice via SMS when they’re not supposed to unless we keep track of which phone number texted each vote. If we were to be sold, the new business owner would also need phone numbers to continue preventing vote fraud.
Here is the actual Privacy Policy for people (your blog system will not allow me to add a real link):
www dot polleverywhere dot com / privacy-policy
Notice we add a term which is very rare in privacy policies:
“Should such a sale, merger or transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to direct the transferee to use the personal information in a manner that is consistent with our Privacy Policy.”
That means we’re compelled by law to direct any acquirer to not spam. Any acquirer’s lawyers would have read this privacy policy. The problem is we cannot say it any stronger: While we would only sell the company to people we believed had our users’ best interest in mind, how could we prevent them from being re-sold and maintain these terms? Our legal team concluded it wasn’t possible to protect them in-perpetuity.
For the 9 years we’ve been in business, we’ve never once sent a marketing message or ad over text message. Even though we have received texts from tens of millions of phone numbers, we’ve never spammed anyone.
We have to follow the CTIA messaging guidelines, and these are strict: Since consumers sometimes pay per-text-received, you MUST collect their consent to send them any unsolicited message. That’s why our we only send messages back to a phones as an immediate reply confirming receipt of a vote or comment. Any company who bought Poll Everywhere would have to honor the same telecom law.
We’ve spent a lot of time and money to work with lawyers to make our terms and privacy policy readable by normal humans. How many companies can you find that go to the extra effort to provide a summary of their terms in plan language like we do?
www dot polleverywhere dot com / terms
Notice they’re in plain english. This is not the default way privacy policies and terms of service are published in online services (see the Apple Terms of Service for example – you can’t even comprehend them without a law degree).
I notice that 99% of all pages on Brigada ask for an email address, but I can’t find any statement (a terms of service or privacy policy) anywhere on the site, even using search engines, that describe how you will treat the email address I’m about to submit with this blog comment.
Please be fair when reviewing how we use personal information. In light of the recent Equifax personal information breach, this stuff is incredibly important, and it’s on everyone’s mind.
Wow Jeff — cool! We’ve edited the content and will write an update in the next edition. Thanks for taking time to tell your story!
Doug, thank you so much for the updated post and your understanding.
Early on we were forced to make a decision about whether this was an audience feedback company or a marketing company, and it wasn’t a hard decision.
Thank you for the edit.
My name is Rocky Tyler, and I’m the Staff Development Manager at Wycliffe Bible Translators, USA. I’m guessing that the presentations mentioned in the original post were hosted by our presenters, because we use Poll Everywhere frequently here.
I’m appalled by both the irresponsibility and the snarky tone of that original post, brigada (whomever you may be). Jeff has offered a professional and definitive response to your post, and hopefully all of your blog followers will take the time to read it. Additionally, if fulfilling the Great Commission is really what your website is all about, perhaps you’ll seize the opportunity for some humble public repentance, because you really didn’t represent us Christians (and by extension, our Christ) very well in the erroneous content and paranoid, demeaning tone of your post.
I’m going to take the liberty of adding some additional information for your readers to consider. I’ve been using Poll Everywhere for most of its young life (as Jeff notes, 9 years) in my college teaching, as well as church and business presentations, and I’ve never had a single complaint from any of my participants about being spammed, because Poll Everywhere simply doesn’t do that.
Also, it’s really important to understand the impact of Jeff’s point that “over two thirds of people just respond via the web or via our app.” What this means is that the only cell phone numbers that Poll Everywhere collects are those of participants who text (i.e., who use “SMS voting” as opposed to using a browser on their smartphone). Participants using a web browser on their smartphones cannot be identified by phone number — their participation is identified using an IP (Internet Protocol) address, and these are assigned dynamically — i.e., each time you use your browser, a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server at your ISP (Internet Service Provider) assigns you an IP address for that session. When you close your browser, that IP address gets assigned to some other user, and when you open your browser again, you get a new one (note: this information comes from my previous life as a certified network administrator serving in Technology Director positions in the public school system, so I’m not just parroting something I read on Poll Everywhere’s site).
My experience (and it is extensive) has been that very few of our participants use SMS polling anymore — the vast majority use their browsers. This is confirmed by Jeff’s mention that, of the multiple thousands (millions, maybe?) of poll interactions they facilitate on any given day, only a third of those happen via texting. So the assertion that “the downside of this app is that it captures every single phone number for PollEv.com to use for spam” is not only unprofessionally and unnecessarily hostile, it’s flat-out wrong.
Most important, even if your phone number is recorded on Poll Everywhere’s servers, that (plus your device type and operating system – e.g., Android/Mac/Windows) is all they record — they have no way of identifying any other personal information about you. So the comment that presenters “lured all those cell phone users to give up their personal information” is both ridiculous and irresponsible. The only information anyone gave up during Missio Nexus was their cell phone number (and device type and OS), and then ONLY if they chose to use texting to participate. In other words, all Poll Everywhere knows about that minority group is that someone with the phone number XXX-XXX-XXXX, on a(n) Android/iPhone/etc device participated via texting in a poll on a certain date. This is hardly a high-risk exposure of personal information — it happens basically every time you use your phone on whatever servers are handling your text/call.
So, brigada, you know that “great lesson” you gave us? “Read the terms. Every time. Every paragraph. Take nothing for granted.”? Well, you missed two key points – i.e., “Understand what it is that a) you’re reading, and b) you’re talking about.” The privacy policy is aimed at protecting people like me – i.e., registered users who have accounts that do contain personal data. None of the people at Missio Nexus who participated in these polls was a registered user. Wycliffe doesn’t require people to register to participate in our polls – that capability is built into the system, and many organizations use it to track their internal training participants. But we don’t register any of our participants. Our participants join a session in real-time without registering (and please note: there is no “secret” registration process – it requires the deliberate conscious entry of personal data – e.g., name and email address), and NONE of their personal information is involved (unless, as previously noted, they choose to use text messaging, and then the only personally significant bit of information involved is the phone number. NO other personally identifiable information enters the system.) So the bottom line is this: the only personal information that Poll Everywhere possesses from our Missio Nexus presentations is that of the presenters themselves (plus my personal information, because one of the presenters was using my account), plus the phone number and device info of anyone who chose to participate by texting – Poll Everywhere doesn’t know who owns the phones; they only know that a cell phone with the number XXX-XXX-XXXX participated. And I reiterate – that same information (phone number and device info) is recorded by all the servers involved in handling every one of your phone calls and texts, so your risk exposure from texting in Poll Everywhere is EXACTLY the same as from using your cell phone for any other purpose.
So again brigada, I call on you to take the opportunity to exercise some humble repentance for an act of communication that was problematic on multiple levels. Or in your own words, an act of communication that was …
So sad.
Hi Rocky. We love it that you are so passionate about an app! By the way, it wasn’t a Wycliffe presenter — but when I separate your emotion from your input, I have to say, your input is great! We were only looking at the words of the terms. We didn’t know the people. Now that you’ve introduced them by relationship, and you’ve made some really good points, we have to say — you’re right and we were wrong. We’ll do an update in the next edition … and we’ve edited the original post as well. Again, thanks for your input!
Many thanks, Doug. I really appreciate your responsiveness. And truly, brother, I was just trying to synchronize the level of my emotion with the level that seemed apparent in the tone of the original post. Many thanks for the good Kingdom work you’re doing, and again, thanks for responding so rapidly …