Today we’re releasing a new feature to your church directory intended to protect your congregation from an extremely common scam to which many churches are falling victim.
Privacy Mode is a Way to Protect Your Congregation’s Data
With privacy mode enabled, when users browse your directory they will be able to contact each other by using a new Contact Me button on someone’s profile, instead of by showing their contact information directly.
Your church will still be able to put a face with a name and contact one another without the risk of having their data harvested by scammers.
The Danger of Public Contact Information
Your online directory is a gold mine for online scammers, and they are constantly looking for ways to social engineer their way into them. When the scammer manages to gain access, they’ll trick congregation members into giving the scammer money, usually by impersonating a pastor or other church leader.
Unfortunately, many of our churches have fallen victim to this attack.
How to Protect your Church with Privacy Mode
The best way to protect your church is to not allow anyone access to your directory unless you have met them in person, and to never change the email address or phone number on someone’s profile without confirming with them first.
Privacy Mode is an additional layer of protection that works by removing the scammer’s incentive to get into the directory. If an admin mistakenly lets them in, they won’t be able to harvest your congregation’s information.
Privacy mode will be enabled on Thursday, March 14th, 2024.
Based on the feedback we have heard from the many churches that have been infiltrated by these scammers, we believe this option is the safest and best option for most of our churches, and will enable it by default.
You Can Disable Privacy Mode
We understand that this change might not be for everybody. If you would like to prevent privacy mode from being enabled you can do so in the advanced settings section of the Church Center settings screen. We strongly encourage you to consider leaving it on to protect your congregation from becoming another victim of this scam.
If you have any questions about this change, please reach out to support. We are more than happy to provide more information and to help you make the best decision for your community.
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