Best practices for handling emailed credit card numbers

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Duane Waite 3
Duane Waite 3
Eighth Anniversary 25 Likes 10 Comments Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
This recent hacking incident has given my organization a chance to rethink our best practices (I'm sure I'm not alone).

Question I'd like to ask:

Some of our more frequent donors often email us their credit card info when they want to make a donation. Is this something we should put a stop to? And is simply deleting the email from the Outlook 365 server enough to "destroy" that information?

I'm thinking that if we have their cc information in the Bio-2 tab, we should be able to run a one-record batch as if it's a recurring donation and process it that way, but perhaps I'm overthinking this.

Any thoughts? Thanks everyone! -- Duane
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  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Ancient Membership 2,500 Likes 2500 Comments Photogenic
    I would certainly discourage including any credit card #s in emails. Used to hear emails are never truly destroyed. I'd be more concerned with wrong person getting/opening email. Donor could accidentally send to wrong recipient too.  To me number is not secure. 


    Yes, if you have the info on Bio-2 you can run the card as needed, one record batch or pull into any other batch of the day. 


    If it were me, I would be contacting those donors, express concern for the safety of their info and work with them to set up a recurring gift schedule.  Or at least ask them to only send the last four digits of the card number.  When I used to have to get updated due to problem with card I would ask the donor call me with the new # at their convenience, if it were more than an exp update.


    I know there are also security concerns with mailing in credit card info. Generally appeal reply envelopes are pretty obvious. I know cases of theft of that info by postal workers, strangers browsing your mailbox or even staff who open mail are pretty isolated but it can still be a cause for concern, IMO.


     

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