TCPA
TCPA is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and was recently updated by the FCC.
Remind helps educators, organizers, students, and parents send messages about class and school-related activities. Our service provides users with built-in controls to help ensure they only receive messages that they want and need. These controls are an important part of how Remind complies with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) . The TCPA creates protections for consumer privacy and prohibits unwanted and unsolicited commercial messages. The FCC's interpretation of the TCPA recognizes that not all messages should be treated equally, which means they treat non-commercial, social, and emergency messages differently from advertising. Remind is an example of a service specifically designed for school-related, non-commercial purposes.
Behavior in accordance with Remind's Community Guidelines is consistent with the FCC's interpretation of the TCPA. The FCC has long held and recently reiterated that while non-commercial messages are subject to the prior consent requirement this consent does not need to be written, and can be expressed by a parent's actions. In that recent order, the FCC clarified, “that when a parent/guardian or student provides only their wireless number as a contact to a school, the scope of consent includes communications from the school closely related to the educational mission of the school or to official school activities absent instructions to the contrary from the party who provides the phone number.”
Given this interpretation, there are a few specific ways we address TCPA compliance:
- We invest in clearly educating all users upon enrolling in a class or school community. Specifically, we communicate what class or school the new user has joined, who the owners of that group are, and how to stop receiving messages at any time.
- Additionally, Remind provides several ways that help educators and organizers add people to groups. One of these features allows a parent/guardian to add another’s phone number. In this case, the parent/guardian is sending the message on Remind, not the school or district. Parents are informed upfront to not send commercial messages using the service and to get permission from people who they are adding to Remind.
- Remind protects newly-added users by providing simple controls to help recipients manage how they receive these messages, and to stop receiving messages entirely. For more detail, please view these instructions.
- And lastly, we provide teachers and administrators with full control of their class and school rosters. While any user can report or block another user, educators specifically have tools to maintain the accuracy of who is receiving communications in their class or school.
Remind's goal is to simplify the way that teachers, students, and parents connect with one another. We believe that efficient school communication brings everyone together to help students succeed. We hope this makes it easier for you and your school to continue using Remind.