This policy is relevant to the spunout (Community Creations CLG) service Text About It. Community Creations is undergoing a rebrand which will result in a name change to spunout. Once the legal name change has taken place this policy will be updated. 50808 and spunout.ie are currently trading names of Community Creations CLG.
Last updated: 28 June 2023
Important notices:
If you're at serious risk to yourself or others, we will need to reach out to emergency services to keep you and/or others safe.
If you're under 18 and you tell us you are at risk of abuse or neglect, we will need to reach out to emergency services and/or TUSLA to keep you safe.
If you give us information about an alleged abuser or inform us of retrospective abuse, where other children may be at risk, we will need to reach out to Ireland’s child protection agency TUSLA.
If you’re a vulnerable adult and you tell us that you are at risk of abuse or neglect, we will need to reach out to the HSE Safeguarding and Protection Teams.
Who are we? What do we do? How can you contact us?
Text About It is a free, anonymous, 24/7 messaging service providing everything from a calming chat to immediate support for mental health and emotional wellbeing.
People reach out to us for many things, like dealing with stress, overwhelming feelings, depression, anxiety, panic, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, bullying, trauma related to violence or sexual assault, or any concerns regarding your mental health or that of your loved ones.
Text About It is a project of spunout, and is funded by the Health Service Executive (HSE). spunout is a registered charity in Ireland: our registered charity number is 20057923.
You can always contact us by emailing hello@spunout.ie for general enquiries.
What happens when you message us?
Our service is provided by trained volunteers under the supervision of paid staff, known as Supervisors.
When you message us by text or WhatsApp, our system uses your phone number to connect you to trained volunteers. Our volunteers do not see your phone number. They will only know information that you tell them directly.
Text About It Supervisors will have access to all messages from your phone number, but not your phone number itself. The reason for this is to make sure that everyone is safe and that conversations between you and our Volunteers are overseen by experienced and qualified mental health and social work professionals. Supervisors use past conversations to make decisions on reporting risk.
In some emergency situations, we will have to make a special request to access your phone number so that we can connect you to resources to help you. Click here to read more.
You may contact us by email at dpo@spunout.ie with any questions you may have about the data we collect, or about this notice.
If at any time you no longer wish to receive messages, you may opt out at any time by texting the word STOP in the message thread.
What personal information do we collect about you?
If you contact us, we will collect some personal information about you. We need the content of your messages to us, so we can respond to your questions and thoughts. Our volunteer may also take notes in the course of your conversation so we can properly assist you.
We will need your phone number only in emergency situations so emergency services can contact you.
We also record information on delivery of individual messages, like the time the message was sent, and technical information about your message, such as message ID, your phone provider and what the message was about. This anonymous information, which cannot identify you to us, is used in order to learn how we can better help people who use the service. It is also used to build research into mental health trends in Ireland.
Who helps us? How do they use your personal information?
In order to provide our service, we rely on a service model and technology system built and managed by Crisis Text Line in the USA. We use the system separately from Crisis Text Line and host your data on AWS, in data centres located in Ireland. Crisis Text Line is only authorised by spunout Text About It to process your data where it is necessary to provide you with our services, and only in compliance with data protection laws applicable to Ireland.
If you choose to communicate with us through WhatsApp, we rely upon WhatsApp Business to let us talk to you. If you want to find out more about the way that WhatsApp uses your data, you can see their terms here.
Sharing personal information with others
At Text About It, we understand how important confidentiality is to you. It’s vital that you feel safe in trusting us. And so, we want to be clear about the circumstances when we may need to share information you provide to us with third parties. For example, we may share your information in the following situations:
If you ask us to share it with emergency services as you feel you’re a danger to yourself or someone else or if you wish to disclose abuse or neglect and want us to report this to TUSLA (Ireland's Child Protective Agency) and/or the HSE Safeguarding and Protection Teams.
If we believe that your life or the life of someone else is in danger, we will contact emergency services to keep you and/or others safe.
If you are under 18 years of age and have been hurt, abused or neglected now, in the past, or are at risk of this, we will need to reach out to emergency services and/or TUSLA (Ireland's Child Protective Agency) to keep you safe.
If you give us information about an alleged abuser, where other children may be at risk, we will need to reach out to TUSLA.
If you tell us you are endangering the safety of another person, we will need to contact emergency services.
If you tell us you are a vulnerable adult and you are at risk of abuse or neglect, we will need to reach out to the HSE Safeguarding and Protection Teams.
Where do we keep your information? How long do we keep it?
We hold all of your data securely in Ireland and Germany, and any companies who work with us are obliged to keep your personal data in the European Union/European Economic Area. Where legal data transfer agreements outside the EU/EEA are in place, appropriate measures will be taken by us in order to ensure compliance with EU Data Protection law.
Personal data, including your telephone number and any text messages you send to us, will be stored for 7 years after you last contact us. Once this time has passed, we will permanently delete this data from our records. If you contact us again, we will not have any record of our previous conversations with you.
Abusing the service
If we think that someone is abusing the service we will end their access to Text About It. Abusing the service can mean any of the following:
Using the service to break the law;
Threatening, harassing, or otherwise inappropriately communicating with our volunteers or staff;
Pretending to be another person or entity;
Using the service to try to exploit or harm minors;
Taking screenshots, copying, or otherwise sharing conversations or information about the Text About It platform, except to report behaviour you believe may be illegal or abusive;
Spamming or collecting personal information of users in order to spam, market, or sell to third parties;
Doing anything that harms anyone’s ability to use our service or which we believe exposes Text About It or users of the service to liability;
Trying to copy or to discover our source code or making your own version of Text About It;
Attempting to interfere with the proper working of Text About It.
You can contact us directly at dpo@spunout.ie if you believe any suspicious behaviour on our systems is occurring.
Post-conversation surveys
At the end of your conversation with our volunteers, you may receive a link to take a survey. This is to help us learn from you and improve our service.
You do not have to take the survey.
If you choose to take the survey, you do not have to answer all of the questions.
Responses are anonymous.
If you leave a note for your volunteer, we’ll share it with them. Your note might also be used for promotional material and training, but will remain anonymous.
What are your rights and how can you use them?
You have rights to your personal data under EU law, and 50808 is committed to helping you use your rights. The relevant data rights you have with us are:
The right of access to your data;
The right to fix any mistakes in your data;
The right to erase your data;
The right to object to us processing your data;
The right to restrict us from processing your data;
The right to object to us processing your data, including automated processing of your data;
The right to ask for your data in a commonly-used, machine readable format (e.g., xlsx, csv);
You also have the right to seek compensation through the courts in the event that your data privacy rights have been infringed.
If you want to exercise your right to access a copy of the information we have about you, please email us at dpo@spunout.ie with the subject title ‘Data Access Request’. You will receive a response within one week where we will ask you to verify your identity. We will need the following information before we can process with your Data Access Request:Your name
The phone number(s) with which you contacted Text About It
Proof of your identity, either through a copy of an official document such as a Passport or Driver’s Licence; an official bill or correspondence in your name.
Depending on the nature of your data, we may also request further information such as the date(s) on which you contacted Text About It or the details of any official data you believe we may hold on you.
If you want us to erase your personal data, please text ‘ERASE’ to 50808 using the same phone number you texted us with. You will receive a message asking you to confirm your request. You can also request us to erase your personal data via email at dpo@spunout.ie, which will be subject to the same verification procedures as a data access request, as set out above.
You will receive a response to your erase request within 30 days and we will make reasonable efforts to process requests promptly. If we cannot delete all of your data right away for legal reasons, you will receive an explanation of why this is the case.
For any other queries in relation to your rights you can email us at dpo@spunout.ie.
Can I contact the Data Protection Commission?
You have the right to contact the Data Protection Commission if you have any concerns or complaints about 50808 and how we process your data.
Website: www.dataprotection.ie
Telephone Number: +353 57 8684800 / +353(0)761 104 800
Address: Data Protection Commissioner, 21 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2, D02 RD28
You can view our complete data protection policies, including our volunteer and texter privacy statements, here: Data Privacy Policies