7.07 Best Practices for Phone Communications

One of the more secure and easier methods of communicating with survivors is via phone calls. To ensure privacy and safety, follow these best practices when communicating with survivors via traditional phones. This document is about organizational policies around phone use. For best practices on calling survivors, leaving messages, and dropped calls, see Phone Communications: A Guide for Anti-Violence Organizations.

For information about other ways of communicating with survivors, including using text, chat, video calls, and email, please see the resources in Section 2: Communicating with Survivors through Digital Services of this toolkit.

Most phone carriers will allow you to block your number from showing up on the caller ID of the person receiving your call. You can also do this manually for each call by dialling *67 before you dial the number. Some smartphones offer an option in the settings where you can turn your caller ID on or off.

If your phone system is set up to block your number on caller ID, check it regularly to make sure that it still works. Upgrades and changes by the phone carrier or your smartphone could unblock the caller ID.

Some survivors may have their phones set up to reject calls from blocked numbers; some may have installed apps that can reveal numbers that are blocked. This may be a safety strategy to protect against harassment. If the person you are calling is using that feature, let them know about your organization’s policy and the reasons you block your caller ID (potential safety and privacy risks for some survivors). Then strategize with them about the best way to reach out.

Some shelters, particularly those that are under a larger social service agency, may have a different organization associated with their phone number. Instead of the caller ID showing up as “domestic violence shelter” or “rape crisis center,” it will say “YWCA” or something else, which may be safer or more private.

The type of phone systems your program uses will have an impact on privacy and safety as well. Your program may be using a traditional landline phone system, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system, and/or cell phones. One isn’t more secure than the other, but depending on the phone system you are using, be aware of the privacy and safety risks that each system poses. Read more about using cell phones to communicate with survivors.

Your program may be collecting identifying information about the people who call, even if you aren’t doing so on purpose. Most phone systems now are designed to collect and store call history, caller ID, voicemail, transcribed messages, and more. How you collect, keep, and store survivors’ personally identifying information can impact their safety and privacy, as well as your confidentiality obligations.

Some phone systems, particularly VoIP and mobile devices, offer the ability to translate voicemail messages into email or text messages. If your program wants to take advantage of this feature, keep in mind that you will also have to consider safety and privacy concerns for email and text messaging. While it may be harder for someone to intercept or accidentally forward a voicemail message, it is much easier to intercept a text message on an advocate’s personal cell phone or to forward an email that has a voicemail message attached.

If your phone system collects caller ID, voicemails, etc., you should have a policy detailing why that information is collected and how long that information is retained. It is best practice to keep the minimum amount of information necessary to meet survivors’ needs (and your reporting requirements), and to only keep information for as long as you absolutely need it. You may need to check your province’s privacy laws to see how long records are allowed to be kept.

Hotlines that promise anonymous calls are particularly obligated to ensure that callers are truly anonymous, which means not keeping callers’ phone numbers. A phone number can be identifying since a reverse phone number lookup online can reveal who owns that phone number and even where they live.

Many phone carriers offer their customers access to call logs and other information through online accounts or billing records. When determining data retention policies, don’t forget to consider access to these accounts. You may want to limit who on staff can access these accounts. When receiving bills, you may want a policy that your program immediately destroys the portions of the bill that contain personally identifying information.

Crisis line management systems may also collect survivors’ personally identifying information. These systems should be set up to delete information about calls as soon as possible and should never keep copies of the content of conversations. Also, while some systems offer to integrate with client databases, routinely or automatically collecting this information is unnecessary and goes against best practices for confidentiality. The level of detail about when and how frequently a survivor contacts you is generally not needed to provide quality services.

To support your development of safe tech use policies, WSC has developed a Use of Technology Policy Template Guide for Women’s Shelters and Transition Houses (PDF, in English only).

Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) is part of a continuum of violence that can be both online and in-person. If you or someone you know is experiencing TFGBV, you are not alone. You can use sheltersafe.ca to find a shelter/transition house near you to discuss options and create a safety plan. You don’t need to stay in a shelter to access free, confidential services and support.

Adapted for Canada with permission from NNEDV’s Safety Net project, based on their resource Phone Communication with Survivors Best Practices.