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We're Here for You

You are about to connect with an advocate from the Baraga County Shelter Home. 

Our live advocates provide 24/7 confidential support, education, personalized safety planning and connection to local resources and providers to anyone impacted by relationship abuse/intimate partner violence. 

Wait times to connect with our live advocates may be longer than 15 minutes. We are here 24/7 and apologize for the wait. If you are looking for resources please search the Get Help section on our website.

Safety and Privacy Information

The Baraga County Shelter Home is the organization which provides all advocacy services through 24-hour telephone services at 1-906-524-7078 and through digital text/SMS and live chat services.

Anonymous digital service is defined as a one-time confidential contact between a user and advocate in which no identifying information is verified. Engaging in our digital services constitutes an agreement and understanding of privacy policy. If at any time, a digital service user feels that their safety or privacy may be compromised due to their use of these services, the interaction can be escalated to phone-based services. Users concerned for thier physical safety and wellbeing are encouraged to contact the Baraga County Shelter Home at 1-906-524-7078. 

Confidential and Anonymous Chat

Our live chat services are provided by ResourceConnect as a service provider. The ResourceConnect Web Chat features a couple major security features which make it a great choice for confidential web-based communications.

The ResourceConnect Web Chat is end-to-end encrypted. Thus, only you and the person you're chatting with can read the contents of the messages being sent. The contents of the messages do not get saved anywhere on your device. Unless you have taken screenshots of your conversation, once you close their browser window or a message has hit its message expiration date, that message will be completely gone. Also, once a message has hit its message expiration date, or one of our advocates deletes it or the conversation it was used in, that message will be permanently removed from the ResourceConnect servers.

However, there are still some important safety risks to be aware of.

First, there is no technology anywhere, and never will be, that can prevent information from being read on a device that has a virus, malware, spyware, etc installed on it. If a spyware or virus program is able to record keystrokes or take screenshots every X number of seconds, there's nothing that can be done to make this device safe. If you believe your device even has the potential to have been compromised, it is safer to use another device to communicate with us  or give our phone-based hotline a call at 1-906-524-7078 from an unmonitored phone.

Second, you should be aware that an eavesdropper who listening to the internet traffic of a chatter will be able to see that you are communicating with someone on ResourceConnect. They won't be able to see which provider you're talking to, but they will likely be able to put two-and-two together if they saw that the you were on the BCSH webpage and then they were suddenly using ResourceConnect. Again, because ResourceConnect is end-to-end encrypted, anyone listening in on the internet traffic won't be able to see what is being said. They will only be able to see that something is being said. In certain situations, this could pose a risk. Usually, however, if you are worried your internet connection could be monitored, you should also be concerned your device has also been compromised. Thus, you should not use ResourceConnect unless you can do so from another location.

Text/SMS Messaging Services

BCSH offers services through a text message short code in which all inbound phone-numbers are scrambled. These services are provided by ResourceConnect include:

Text-for-help services: The same privacy standards applied to our chat services apply to our text-for-help platform. Any statement of charges or billing will appear as a text message and is in no way connected to BCSH. Users may be asked to provide voluntary feedback to survey questions.

Users can opt-out of services by texting ‘STOP’ to our shortcode any time. Users can get help by texting ‘HELP’ to our shortcode any time. Message and data rates may apply. Users will be charged standard text messaging rates relative to their provider’s plans. Carriers are not liable for the delayed or undelivered messages. Message frequency may vary.

Users should be aware and mindful that text messages sent using modern smart phones are saved indefinitely and could compromise their safety. While SMS messages do get encrypted on the ResourceConnect server as soon as they arrive, SMS Chat messages cannot be end-to-end encrypted. This means that cell phone providers can, and do, keep copies of SMS messages on their servers. Verizon makes public that they keep messages for up to four days. Verizon can even, at times, show the contents of a user's text messages when logging into the Verizon account portal. Other cell phone providers say they don't keep the contents of messages, but nothing is stopping them from doing so. All cell phone providers keep logs of which phone numbers their subscribers are texting to. These logs show up on billing statements. If you are using a family phone plan, or someone else gains access to your phone bill, it will be clear that you had a conversation with BCSH.

Phone spyware is also very good at recording SMS messages. Thus, all of the same recommendations of warning users to not use ResourceConnect on a device that could have been tampered with apply to SMS conversations as well. Finally, it is not possible for SMS message to automatically expire on your phone. The only way to get a message off your phone is for you to manually delete them.

Users concerned for their physical safety and well-being are encouraged to contact BCSH at 1-906-524-7078. 

 

Our Impact Last Year (FY2022)

  • People Helped

    90

  • Safe Stays in Shelter

    1,030

  • Financial Assistance to Survivors

    more than $12,000

  • Dollars Raised

    More than $36,000

© 2024 Baraga County Shelter Home
Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

  1. What Information Do We Collect? When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.
  2. Personal Information You Choose to Provide We may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, placing an order, requesting an estimate, or participating in online surveys. If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.
  3. Website Use Information Similar to other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below, "What Are Cookies?") and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.
  4. How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us? Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may at any time to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.
  5. What Are Cookies? Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.
  6. How Do We Use Information Collected From Cookies? We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our website and better serve our users. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our website to better meet the needs of our users and prospective users. Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.
  7. Notice of New Services and Changes Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request.
  8. How Do We Secure Information Transmissions? When you send confidential personal information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website. Other email that you may send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.
  9. How Do We Protect Your Information? Information Security -- We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction. Evaluation of Information Protection Practices -- Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information. Employee Access, Training and Expectations -- Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.
  10. How Can You Access and Correct Your Information? You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us using the contact form provided to you within the site structure of our website.
  11. Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties? We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.
  12. What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information? We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.
  13. Permission to Use of Materials The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly.
Terms & Conditions

Terms & Conditions

Donation Refund Policy

We are grateful for your donation and support of our organization. If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to our organization please contact us. Refunds are returned using the original method of payment. If you made your donation by credit card, your refund will be credited to that same credit card.

Automated Recurring Donation Cancellation

Ongoing support is important to enabling projects to continue their work, so we encourage donors to continue to contribute to projects over time. But if you must cancel your recurring donation, please notify us.

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