Privacy Settings for MCommunity Groups

MCommunity offers two privacy settings for groups. One lets you control membership visibility, and the other lets you determine who can send email to the group. Group owners are expected to respect the privacy wishes of group members. See Responsibilities of Group Owners in Managing MCommunity Groups that You Own.

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Member Visibility

Group owners can make the member lists of their groups either visible to the public or hidden from all but group members who are logged in to the directory (and also U-M Google Calendar users). Making group membership private will also hide the owner(s) from non-members.

  • Public groups have member lists and owners that are visible to all. Anyone who looks at the group's profile can see the members and owners. If a member of the university community invites a public group to a U-M Google Calendar event, they will see the members listed.
  • Private groups have members and owners that are visible to members only. Group members who are logged in can view the member list in MCommunity or in U-M Google Calendar events to which the group has been invited. They can also view the owner(s). No one else can see these entries.

Warning! If you make a private group joinable, group membership will be visible to anyone who is logged in to the directory.

Important! Please refer to our Appropriate Use Guidelines for MCommunity Groups when determining privacy and visibility settings for your group.

Additionally, we encourage you to respect the privacy expectations and preferences of your group members when selecting how visible the member list should be.

Update Members List Visibility

In order to change the privacy settings for a given group, you first need to navigate to My Groups by clicking the second button from the top right of any MCommunity page when logged in. Then, click on the name of the group in question and scroll down to the Settings section in the bottom left corner of the page. Click on the Edit button to the right of Settings

In order to alter your group’s visibility, check or uncheck the box next to member list viewable by members only. If this box is checked, the member list will only be visible to logged-in group members. 
Make sure to click save below the checklist in order to update this setting.

Update Email Access

Using the same Settings menu as above, you can also change whether or not only members can email the group as a whole using its group email address. If anyone can email this group is checked, then anyone will be able to email your group, even from an email address that isn’t associated with a member. In order to update privacy settings, click edit to the right of Settings and then check either members or anyone with a umich.edu address under Restrict who can send messages to this group. Remember to click save in order to update this setting.

Check What Others See

When you are logged in to MCommunity, your view of a group that you own includes information that others cannot see. You can see the members of your group even if you have set the group so others cannot.

Who Can Send Mail to the Group

Permitted senders can send email to the group, in which case it will be received without issue. However, when others attempt to send email to the group, certain conditions must be met. The receives disallowed messages role marks a member of your group as someone who will receive email from people who are not permitted senders. A member with the receives disallowed messages role can choose to forward such a message to the group at large.

If no one is designated as receives disallowed messages, disallowed messages will return to the sender with an error message attached. 

Permitted senders can be added under the Settings menu. Receives disallowed messages can be configured directly below, under who receives messages from an unpermitted sender.

Important! The above doesn’t apply if anyone can email this group is enabled under Settings.

Last Updated: 
Monday, August 1, 2022