Protecting Your Personal Information When Ordering Wedding Cakes
Ordering Wedding Cakes…
Make sure You Protect Your Personal Information
Are you aware your personal information is most likely accessible to individuals in the bakery that you don’t know and have in no way met?
Worse than that, they may have access to your residence address, telephone number, and possibly your credit card facts.
Because your privacy is critical to you, make sure to ask each wedding cake baker/designer you visit if they have in place a “Privacy Policy”, since this policy helps to protect the personal details you disclose to your wedding cake baker/designer.
Most often, however, a wedding cake baker does not ask for details that could lend itself to the creation of an identity thief. Nevertheless, if you think you are being asked too much private information, we recommend you only share what is absolutely necessary, or what you feel comfortable with in disclosing.
As an important reminder, additionally ask your bakers how and where they store your information, and who is authorized to have access to it.
We don’t want to make a big federal case out of this, but once again, you do want to feel assured by understanding what is happening with the personal facts that is listed on your order agreement.
For example, if your wedding cake baker keeps their wedding cake orders in a safe, locked filing cabinet, or secured in an office, at least they are using reasonable steps to protect you.
It’s always good to understand your purchase order is located in a precise place where all the wedding cake orders are kept. This helps eliminate missing orders, restricted entry by other nonessential employees, and permits quick entry when necessary by essential, authorized employees.
Typical Questions A Wedding Cake Baker Might Ask You
Listed below is a common list of questions a wedding cake baker/designer may ask you. If they ask for more details than what is outlined below, be careful in supplying the answers to what might be thought of as a private or personal inquiry:
- What is your first and last name?
- Your home phone number?
- Your mobile phone number?
- Your residence address?
- Your work phone number?
- Who is your employer?
- Your company’s phone number?
- Your Driver’s License number?
Some bakers may additionally ask the same questions regarding your fiancée, and your mother and father or guardian.
In addition, if you pay by check or credit card, your baker may record and keep this data also. Simply make sure these bakers are effectively protecting it in a safe, locked filing cabinet or secured in an office.
You should additionally ask the bakers you visit if their customer list, or database, is shared or sold to others.
If names and various other data are being shared or sold, simply request your name to be removed from this list.
Be mindful, many small companies without a privacy policy still sell or share their customer lists to noncompetitive businesses. This practice is utilized to bring in extra earnings for the wedding cake baker who is supplying the information.
Since we started our research, we have not identified one solitary independent baker/designer who had a privacy policy in place. There have been a few who verbally informed us they had one in place, but when these bakers were asked to email us a copy of their policy, not one of them responded.
But here’s the good news if you decide to use a grocery store bakery. Most of them have privacy policies which cover all their departments…including their bakeries.
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