Privacy Policy

KFUO Radio, the official broadcast voice of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Effective Date: April 9, 2021

Purpose of this Policy

The purpose of this privacy policy (the “Policy”) is to explain the types of information The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (“LCMS” or “we”) may gather about you, how we may use that information, to whom we disclose it, and the choices you have regarding our use of, and your ability to change or correct, the information.

Scope of this Policy

This Policy applies to LCMS websites, mobile applications (including the KFUO radio mobile applications), social media sites, and other interactive services (the “Services”).

LCMS also uses various service providers who may collect your information on LCMS’s behalf. These services include maintaining listener and donor information for LCMS, as well as accepting and processing donations to LCMS. While LCMS’s service providers are required to limit their use of your personal information to what is necessary to provide services to LCMS, you are encouraged to review the privacy policies of any third parties to whom you provide personal information intended for LCMS.

Information we collect

LCMS gathers and maintains a wide variety of financial and personal information about you. The types of personal information we collect includes:

Your name and contact information.
Payment data, including credit card information.
Transaction information.
Donation information.
Information you provide to us through our website or application features, including recorded or written comments on our programming.
Your listening and usage data.
Marketing data, including survey responses, demographic data, and device data.

We may collect such information when you:

Register for an account, including with any of our service providers whom we engage for that purpose.
Make a donation or submit a related inquiry.
Contact us with a message, whether as a recording or in written form.
Participate in a survey.
Apply for a job or internship at LCMS.
Otherwise volunteer information to us or respond to a request for information through any of our Services.

When you use our Services, we may also collect information about you or your device automatically through the use of cookies, logs, or other tracking technologies. Depending on which Services you use, that information may include:

The Internet Protocol address (IP address) of the computer or device you used to access the Services or other media content downloaded through our Services.
The domain name of your Internet Service Provider.
The website, application, platform or service you visited before and after visiting our Service.
Search terms you enter using the Services or on a referring website.
Your approximate geographic location information.
A list of files you download, listen to, view, e-mail, text or otherwise share and other content preferences.
Information about your interactions with our email messages, such as links you click on and whether you open or forward a message, the date and time of these interactions, and information about the computer or device you use to read emails.

Our Services also make use of third-party analytics, cookie data collection and linking services (collectively “Analytics Services”), including Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. We may use analytics data, including but not limited to geographic, demographic, and interest reporting information, to recognize and understand user preferences, make improvements and for other operational purposes.

How we use and share your information

We do not rent, sell, lend or otherwise provide mailing lists, telephone numbers, mailing addresses or e-mail addresses to other individuals or organizations. From time to time, LCMS will partner with other Lutheran organizations to share additional giving opportunities our donors might want to learn about. In these instances, your contact information is NOT shared with the partner organization. Through a formal agreement to protect personal donor information, the partner organization will send letters on our behalf, and we will reciprocate. These partnership mailings are one-time and conditional.

We, our service providers, and our vendors may use the information we collect from you (whether provided by you directly or automatically collected through technology) to:

Administer, promote, analyze, and improve our Services.
Respond to your questions or messages and fulfill your orders or requests for services.
Customize the content you see and hear.
Send you marketing, fundraising, membership and other communications.
Publish, broadcast or otherwise use the information you submit to us.
Comply with laws and enforce our legal rights.
We also may use the information we collect from you in other ways, and for other purposes, if we have disclosed such use to you at the time of collection of the information or if we otherwise have obtained your consent.

Subject to the choices you have to control what information we collect and how we use it as described in the “Your privacy choices” section of this Policy, we reserve the right to share with any third party, in accordance with applicable law, aggregated or other information that does not directly identify you as an individual.

We also may share your name, e-mail address, and other personal information, including financial information, with:

Third-party service providers for purposes of providing our Services. These may include third parties we engage to store listener and donor information, engage with our listeners through mail and electronic communications, receive and process donors’ contributions, and update our Services.
When required by law or public authorities.
With other parties if we have disclosed such sharing to you at the time of collection of the information or if we otherwise have obtained your consent.

Safeguarding your personal information

We take your privacy seriously. We employ physical, electronic, and managerial safeguards in an effort to secure the information we collect. All LCMS employees are required to sign a confidentiality agreement annually pledging their individual commitment to safeguard your personal information. When you submit your credit card information electronically, that transaction is protected using “Secure Socket Layer” (SSL) encryption to prevent your credit card information from being seen as it travels over the Internet. Our network traffic is monitored to identify unauthorized attempts to access, upload or change information or otherwise cause damage.

Because no security system is impenetrable, however, we cannot guarantee the security of our databases or that information you supply will never be intercepted, accessed, or disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Policy. Because most e-mail and mobile transmissions are not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail, text messages, or other mobile transmissions.

Your privacy choices

If you do not consent the collection, use or sharing of information as described in this Policy, please do not use the Services or provide us with information. By using the Services or providing us with information through the Services, you are agreeing to the collection, use and sharing of that information as described in this Policy.

You can stop the delivery of marketing e-mails or other communications by following the unsubscribe instructions in any such communication you receive. You also can contact us at infocenter@lcms.org. If you provide registration information to us, you can sign in to your account to update or correct that information at any time.

You can revoke your consent to collection of your geolocation information at any time by using the privacy settings of your device and/or the settings of the KFUO mobile application.

Do not track

The LCMS does not currently respond to browser do-not-track signals. Instead, we adhere to the standards set out in this Policy and offer the choices described above.

Children

If you are under 13, please do not register for the Services or provide us with any contact or other information. If you are between the ages of 13 and 18, you must obtain permission from your parent or guardian before registering for the Services or otherwise sending any contact or other information.

Notice to users outside of the United States

Our Services are operated within the United States. If you access our Services outside of the United States, we may transfer the information collected from you to data centers outside of your home country or jurisdiction. In particular, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States and other jurisdictions where we, our service providers, or our vendors operate, where data protection and other laws may not be equivalent to those in your jurisdiction. By using the Services, you agree that your information can be transferred to and used in the United States and in other jurisdictions where we, our service providers, or our vendors operate.

Use of links

On our website, we provide links to other sites that may contain information of interest to visitors and members of the LCMS online community. We take no responsibility for, and exercise no control over, these organizations or their views, and take no responsibility for accuracy of the information contained on other servers.

Creating a text link from your website to our site does not require permission. If you have a link you would like us to consider adding to our site, please send an email to infocenter@lcms.org with the subject “Link Suggestion.”

Use of text and images

If you would like to publish information you find on our site, please ask permission by sending your request to infocenter@lcms.org. A copyright statement appears at the bottom of pages where text or images are posted on our site with the permission of the original copyright holder. Information about using the LCMS or KFUO logo and images is available upon request.

For more information

The LCMS reserves the right to change this Policy at any time. If you have any questions or concerns about this Policy, please contact us at infocenter@lcms.org.