Using Email

Is it appropriate to use email to send membership and financial donor statements to members of the ward? Does the Church have a policy regarding this? It would be a lot easier for me to send ward members emails of these documents instead of spending weeks trying to track down members.

chrisrgr wrote:Is it appropriate to use email to send membership and financial donor statements to members of the ward? Does the Church have a policy regarding this? It would be a lot easier for me to send ward members emails of these documents instead of spending weeks trying to track down members.

Instructions about protecting confidential information are provided in Handbook 1, 13.8 and 13.9. Member information and financial information are confidential and require protection. Sending this information by e-mail provides no protection and you cannot be assured the intended recipient gets this sensitive information.

Consider how a bank handles your personal account. Any information sent to you, such as statements, are available only through secure means. Most of the time they send an e-mail notifying you that the documents are available by download through a secure site. They only send the document by e-mail when it is encrypted and the intended recipient address is certain.

You could expose the Church and yourself to legal difficulties by sending these types of confidential documents by e-mail.

chrisrgr wrote:Is it appropriate to use email to send membership and financial donor statements to members of the ward? Does the Church have a policy regarding this? It would be a lot easier for me to send ward members emails of these documents instead of spending weeks trying to track down members.

In my opinion, this is confidential and sensitive information, and e-mail is not a confidential means of communication, so it would not be appropriate to do this. Some, I realize, are not as concerned about this and would not object.

If a member specifically asked me to do this, I would discuss with them the fact that the information is not protected in doing so. If they still wanted me to do it, I might print the information to a pdf and wing it their way.

But I would not initiate the action on my own.

chrisrgr wrote:Is it appropriate to use email to send membership and financial donor statements to members of the ward? Does the Church have a policy regarding this? It would be a lot easier for me to send ward members emails of these documents instead of spending weeks trying to track down members.

I cannot test it (because I am a leader and have greater permissions), but I believe a member could go to lds.org under the Tools menu and access all of the information that would be available on an Individual Ordinance Summary (IOS). This would allow the member to access membership information.

In the totally rumor category, it is my feeling that the time will come when members will be able to access their financial donation information online, but that certainly has not happened to this point, and even Church leaders cannot access that information online. It only comes through MLS.

JD,

Thanks for the reply. I just read those sections in the handbook and it doesn't really address if there is a policy for the use of email. I agree that email is not secure in the best sense unless public and private certificates are used for encryption. However, snail mail I feel is far less secure plus cost a lot more in money and time. Is snail mail consider by the church an appropriate way to send these types of documents?

chrisrgr wrote:I agree that email is not secure in the best sense unless public and private certificates are used for encryption. However, snail mail I feel is far less secure plus cost a lot more in money and time. Is snail mail consider by the church an appropriate way to send these types of documents?

In many countries, yes. In some countries, regular mail is not secure.

The most secure method of transmission is to hand it to the member. Of course, the member sometimes then leaves it laying around with their scriptures . . .

IOS is not available at this time via the web to normal members.

lajackson wrote:I cannot test it (because I am a leader and have greater permissions), but I believe a member could go to lds.org under the Tools menu and access all of the information that would be available on an Individual Ordinance Summary (IOS). This would allow the member to access membership information.

No, that's not true. Regular members have no access to IOS information. On the Directory they can see their address, phone, email address, and photo, but nothing at all about ordinances, marriage date, children, parents, etc.

chrisrgr wrote:IOS is not available at this time via the web to normal members.

Sorry, then. And I will so advise my informant.

aebrown wrote:No, that's not true. Regular members have no access to IOS information. On the Directory they can see their address, phone, email address, and photo, but nothing at all about ordinances, marriage date, children, parents, etc.

Unless they then bounce over to new.familysearch.org, using the LDS Account, and view their own birth date, marriage date, with full names of parents, children, spouse, and children's birthdates. About the only thing missing is the MRN and the other ordinance dates.

I've emailed donation statments to members who moved but only after they request it. There really doesn't seem to be a need to send an IOS since members can request one from the clerk at any time.

Would it be a violation of church policy to encrypt the confidential information/files with something like AxCrypt, send it by e-mail, and share the password by phone? Seems pretty secure to me. "Secure" is a relative term, though most seem to use it as if it's an absolute term.

Since the church doesn't supply an e-mail system that we could use for confidential communications, what about using something like hushmail.com? I've read that hushmail is independently verified in their approach, to the point that no employee in their organizational structure could access the encrypted e-mail content on their servers, even if they wanted to. I'm sure that there are others out there too.

The best way to send donation statements via the internet, now that online donations are available (assuming they're in the United States), is to direct them to the LDS.org/donations tool to get their statement there.