Crisis Text Line, a messaging service that uses technology and human volunteers to provide mental health support, has ended its controversial data-sharing relationship with Loris.ai, a for-profit spinoff from the founder of the association, Nancy Lublin. In a Monday evening blog post, Crisis Text Line cited “community concerns” as the impetus for the policy change, alluding to the backlash it has received from privacy specialists, The politiciansand the public because Politics reviewed the arrangement last week.
Crisis Text Line claims to provide free, 24-hour, confidential messaging. The service uses machine learning to identify keywords and sort messages based on their perceived urgency. But to speak with a Crisis Text Line adviser, Politics found that users previously had to provide consent for their anonymized data to be shared with Loris, a customer service software company launched in 2021. Tech Crunch previously described Loris as a training platform to help businesses prepare for and manage difficult conversations, like heated confrontations with customer service, using “learnings from Crisis Text Line.” In addition to having the same founder, Crisis Text Line owns a stake in Loris, Politics said.
Several privacy experts shared their concerns with Politics on the data sharing policy employed by Crisis Text Line, questioning whether users were actually aware of the arrangement and noting the difficulty of cleaning personal data to the point of being truly unrecognizable.
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“These are people at their worst. Using this data to help other people is one thing, but commercializing it seems like a real ethical line to cross for a nonprofit,” said Jennifer King, privacy and data policy officer at the Stanford University. Politics. The report also notes that Crisis Text Line has worked with schools, local governments, tech companies and shares its data through its research collaboration program.
In an open letter and a series of tweet, Crisis Text Line responded that its relationship with Loris has always been public and affirmed its confidence in the company’s ability to anonymize data. “We do not share personally identifiable information with Loris.ai or any other company,” the letter states.
Still, the arrangement continued to receive criticism over the weekend, and on Monday Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr sent a letter asking the nonprofit to end the arrangement “to preserve the integrity of mental health helplines.” (The FCC helps administer the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is “separate from the services offered by the Crisis Text Line,” Carr says in the letter). Later that evening, Crisis Text Line published the blog post announcing the change, along with an updated terms of service and privacy policy page.
“We understand that you do not want Crisis Text Line to share data with Loris, even if the data is treated securely, anonymized and removed from personally identifiable information,” the message read. “As a result, we have terminated our data sharing relationship with Loris. This change includes our request to Loris to delete the data he received from Crisis Text Line.