Privacy: your visitors’ numbers and text messages

A visitor’s phone number is used only to send them the two texts for their visit. It is stored scrambled, never shown to you or your staff in full, never sold and never shared for anything else.

When a visitor turns on text messages they hand over a phone number and agree to two texts. Three things are kept because of that. The first is the number itself, for the texts. The second is proof that they agreed. The third is a list of people who said stop, so they are never texted again.

• On your side: the Text messages card in Billing shows totals by country. It never shows a phone number.
• On the visitor’s side: the box they tick says exactly what they agree to, names your business, and links to How we use your number.
• In the privacy policy: the full wording, including the exact time a number is kept. Link it for visitors who ask.

Rui joined the line at Ana’s Bakery on 3 March and turned on texts. By 3 April his number is wiped. The proof that he agreed (the sentence he ticked, Portugal, English) stays for 24 months. If Rui had replied STOP, a code made from his number would stay on the stop list, so the bakery’s system can never text him by accident. If he writes to ask for his number to be erased, we find it by that code, not by reading numbers.

• Never write a visitor’s number down for texts. The visitor types it themselves.
• If a visitor asks what we keep, read them the table above.
• If a visitor wants their number erased, use Visitor data requests and enter the number. Erasing that person also removes the text-update number, the proof they agreed, the saved “is it a mobile” answer and any second text still waiting to go. The stop-list code stays, so they are never texted by accident. They can also write to us and we do the same.
• Link the privacy policy from your own paperwork if you describe how your business uses texts.

• The mobile networks. A text passes through the networks on its way. turnda cannot control what a network records.
• The visitor’s phone. Once a text arrives, it lives on the visitor’s phone, and they decide who sees it.
• Other numbers you collect. If your own staff write numbers down for another purpose, that is your own record, not turnda’s.
• Other channels. WhatsApp and email have their own privacy pages.