Tech Forum

“The Church has provided the methodology to either display e-mail addresses and telephone numbers or to hide them in the directory. It is left up to the parents and guardians of minor children to decide what they feel is appropriate for their circumstances.”

jdlessley
Community Moderators

I have looked high and low done searches and gave up trying to find the Privacy Policy referred to in other posts on the directory forum. I came across it recently. You can find it in two places. 1. Logged on the directory on lds.org. <My Household(left panel) <View Household Visibility & Privacy Policy (center panel).
2. On lds.org Directory click <help <Editing Your Profile <Review the Privacy Agreement
https://ue.ldschurch.org/ldsapphelp/dir ... rofile.htm

Some posts have talked strongly about the minimum use of minors email, phone, & photo. They refer to keeping our children safe. Which I agree should always be a focus. As I have learned and explored and wondered about the proper use of email and phone # for places in the different applications on the directory, calendar, and MLS, I have been torn between do we encourage the use of this contact information or do we ignore it and don't bring it as a feature. On one hand having the the deacons, Beehives etc. use a calendar on LDS.ORG for there activities seems exciting and useful. On the directory to be able to send an email or a text to the Priest, Teachers, Deacons, Laurels, MiaMaid, and Beehives seems like good training in helping them become good leaders and effective ways to progress the work. Yet on the other hand having contact information could be a temptation for someone to get out of control. Reading the policy I think I understand now where the church is coming from. The bishop and Stake President can now make their recommendations as to how we proceed. It looks like that a policy in our ward might be emerging, to have the parents email in the slot of the minor. The bishop will be addressing this in an upcoming training with the Presidencies in our ward. What are other wards doing in using the youth in connection with the said applications?

I have read forums & help sections about the children visibility and the Stake. I was wondering if somewhere the help sections addresses the age of a child and visibility on the ward basis, Is there an age when a child can have a phone, email, picture, or lds.org account? Is this all up to the parents also?
Thank you

1968leocomeeatabite wrote:Is there an age when a child can have a phone, email, picture, or lds.org account? Is this all up to the parents also?

You have to be 8 years old to get an LDS Account. If a person is that old and has the required information to create an LDS Account, then there is no technical impediment to obtaining an account. To create an LDS Account you have to agree to the Rights and Use Agreement, and a minor child can't enter into that contract (at least to my understanding of the law, but IANAL), so there might be a legal impediment.

The Directory places no limitations on who can have an individual phone, email, or picture. But only the head of household and spouse can edit the profile of household members (and perhaps also other adults in the household -- I'm not sure about how that works right now). So minor children can't personally enter those details, although parents (or clerks and bishopric members) can do that on their behalf, regardless of the age of the child.

I will add that even if the children's privacy is set to "stake" that most people in the stake still can't see youth. Not even the stake YM/YW president. I think only the extended Stake Presidency can see the youth in the stake.

So the youth are limited to "Ward" visibility.

The parents can edit the contact information for children. That should be sufficient for guiding how the parents want their children to be contacted.

I personally choose to limit the amount of contact information I provide church members in the directory to a home phone and email because I don't want to be contacted in other ways for church purposes. Many other people post additional information because they don't mind. I like that people can choose what they want to share and the system seems to work pretty well.