Private groups in the MCommunity Directory now hide not only the members, but also the owners and moderators. Aside from enhancing overall MCommunity privacy, this feature, which was implemented May 13, will help make the kind of email spoofing that occurred earlier this year more difficult. It stops would-be email spoofers from discovering and impersonating the moderator of a private group. (See Forged emails spread hateful messages to Engineering community in The University Record.)
- How private groups used to work. Group members were visible only to members of the group. Group owners and moderators were visible to anyone.
- How they work now. Group members, owners, and moderators are visible only to members of the group. No one else can see them.
The change only affects MCommunity groups that are set to be private; it does not affect public groups.
LDAP access. The change affects all forms of access to the MCommunity Directory, including LDAP access. Queries to the MCommunity LDAP Tree will no longer return the owners and moderators of private groups without authenticated or administrative access.
Need to contact the owners of a private group? You can use the Requests To address listed in the Contact Information section of the group. This address is always in the form of <groupname>-requests@umich.edu.
