As of Friday afternoon, the mass e-mail privacy statement, to be used in conjunction with messages sent through the University's Lyris ListManager instance, is live and under a host name many of you already know: www.privacy.umn.edu (and without the "www").

The mass e-mail statement itself is at www.privacy.umn.edu/mass-email. You might note that it and the Web privacy statement are not linked to one another; the Web privacy statement is related to an official University policy, while there is currently no policy related to mass e-mail privacy. To avoid confusion over the mass e-mail statement being a matter of policy, cross-links were left of.

Despite the absence of policy, best practice is to let your recipients know what information is being collected and how that information is being used. The mass e-mail privacy statement was written in broad terms, to cover possible uses of Lyris ListManager and the internal workings of the system. As an example, you might only make use of aggregate tracking data in the system but, the system needs to track at a personally identifiable level in order to come up with the aggregate information so, you're covered.

While inclusion of the statement is not required by policy, best practice is to include the statement for your recipients. Changes to the mass e-mail templates and a broader announcement should be coming in the next week or so.