Follow Up Boss Privacy Policy Changes: What Real Estate Agents Need to Know

Follow Up Boss has made several updates to its privacy policies and terms of service over the past year, and many real estate agents haven’t taken the time to understand what those changes mean for their database and their business. Your client database is one of your most valuable business assets, it’s critical to understand who has access to it, how it can be used, and what your rights are as a subscriber. Here’s what you need to know.

Key Policy Areas to Review

Privacy policy changes in SaaS platforms can be dry and legalistic, but for real estate agents, a few categories are particularly important to understand.

Data ownership and portability The most fundamental question: who owns your database? The short answer is that you do, but the practical answer is more nuanced. Most CRM platforms, including Follow Up Boss, assert the right to process and analyze your data for platform improvement purposes, and some maintain the right to share aggregated, anonymized data with third parties.

What matters practically:

Can you export your full contact database, including all notes, tags, and communication history, at any time?
What happens to your data if you cancel your subscription?
How long is your data retained after account termination?

Review the current Follow Up Boss terms to confirm you have full export rights and understand the data retention period after cancellation.

Third-party integrations and data sharing Follow Up Boss integrates with dozens of lead sources, advertising platforms, and marketing tools. Each integration comes with data sharing implications. When you connect Zillow, Google Ads, or a third-party SMS platform to your CRM, those integrations may share lead and client data between platforms.

This is typically necessary for the integrations to function, but agents should be aware of which platforms have access to their data and review those platforms’ privacy policies as well.

Communication compliance Recent updates to messaging regulations (particularly the FCC’s TCPA rules and Canada’s CASL requirements) have implications for how CRM platforms handle text messaging. Follow Up Boss has updated its terms to require that agents confirm they have proper consent before sending automated text messages.

This is important: if you’re using automated SMS sequences in Follow Up Boss without proper consent documentation, you may be in violation of federal communications regulations, not just the platform’s terms of service.

Practical Steps to Take Now

Based on these considerations, here’s what real estate agents using Follow Up Boss should do:

Export your database now, log in and export a full CSV of your contacts, including all custom fields and tags. Store this file securely off-platform. Do this quarterly regardless of any policy changes.
Review your integration list, go to Settings > Integrations and audit which third-party platforms have access to your Follow Up Boss data. Remove any integrations you no longer use.
Audit your SMS consent documentation, confirm that contacts receiving automated text messages have provided explicit opt-in consent. If you don’t have documentation, pause automated SMS to those contacts until you can re-confirm consent.
Subscribe to platform change notifications, Follow Up Boss (and every SaaS platform you use) sends update emails. Mark them as important and read them, policy changes that affect your business will be announced there first.

Staying on top of platform policy changes is part of running a professional real estate business in 2025 and beyond. AgentMoves is built on transparent data practices, with every client owning their own data with full export rights at any time. Learn more about how we handle your data, and run your free Marketing Visibility Audit to see the full picture of your online presence.