Hello!
I’m preparing to leave for Ecuador this Wednesday, Dec 4. Things are falling into place and look ready, though there’s always catching up on things as the days dwindle! Folks have been very generous supporting me in the days coming up to departure, from the St James Society, to the youth group in East Boston, to local people here in the North End and many other friends - I’m very grateful.
In preparation, I have some good news to share below regarding the website and privacy.
Please read it below, as it’s important and confidential to subscribers to Barriers to Bridges.
Please keep me in your prayers as I head out on Wednesday, and I will be remembering you in updates along the way as well.
God bless,
Jerome
New Privacy Changes
I have some good news to share. I've made some changes to the website regarding privacy settings. First I have to say that this is not a response to a “hack” or other security or privacy emergency, and no one’s privacy or personal information has been compromised. I'll share the vision and the “why” for the changes below, but first, here are the practical summary points for using the website and emails.
SUMMARY
The emails you receive as a subscriber will continue as before, and you don't have to do anything new to receive them or access the links in them. You can also continue forwarding emails to friends - everyone who has access to the links in the emails has access to that content.
Emails will soon be going out on a regular weekly schedule containing all the posts published within the week. They will no longer go out on a post-by-post basis.
Certain pages on the website now each require the same password for access. That password, available to all subscribers, is: b2b123. These pages are Blog, Ministries/Projects, and Giving. They are now placed behind a menu header called "subscribers".
Access to the other pages remains public.
VISION
An important part of the website experience is the rich content of my experiences that I'm grateful for and glad to share with trusted people. This content includes an array of media, stories, and other identifying information of a variety of people, both in Ecuador and the US, including children and minors. It has always been openly and easily available to anyone who visits the website, and the front page itself was designed to make the more engaging content especially accessible to anyone visiting. This approach had evolved out of the blogging platform I was using. But because personal and private information about me and others, both local and in other countries, was easily accessible, I had deliberately kept the website on the "sidelines", so to speak, of the internet social networks. This approach has, according to the site traffic details I have access to, effectively limited access to trusted people: friends and family, subscribers and their social circles. By not actively promoting the website, I haven't experienced any "hacks" or obvious breaches of confidence. This approach has been effective at maintaining a reasonably level of privacy for the people included in the content, while allowing trusted people a certain amount of access to my own experiences with those people.
However, I have always wanted to be able to share the site more freely in public, and this would require that the site be re-organized to protect privacy. So, I've finally decided to set up the site to have publicly visible pages that welcome and engage visitors but don't include private content, while making that content available to subscribers on private pages locked with a common password. The end result for now is the practical changes that I presented at the beginning.
As noted, subscriber emails will operate as before - links in the emails can be accessed by anyone, even people you forward the email to. Specific posts - which are what contain all the content - are not themselves locked. What are locked are the pages that present and "house" the links to those posts. And so, the posts are effectively hidden from visitors who don't have the password. These posts are set up to not appear in search engines either.
Since specific posts are accessible to anyone who has their links, I am entrusting the links to you in the emails! I encourage sharing with people you trust, but I do ask for your discretion please. (The only alternative more private than this would be to secure every post with the same password, which would need to be entered at each link click. I decided that this is too cumbersome, but I can review it as things go forward.)
The content considered private includes:
The entire blog, including news & stories, quarterly reports, and more on mission. (These include financial reports.)
The descriptions of specific ministries and projects and their locations, both current and past.
Giving (fundraising) efforts, including all their beneficial details and financial information
You will notice that the publicly visible pages, like the front page, include several photos of people. I decided to include these because they don't include context (names, ages, locations, story lines, contact info) that could reveal identity to strangers, while they help to put a human dimension to the message that the pages attempt to convey.
I should also note that any personal or financial information given through the website has always been held confidential through Donorbox, Stripe, Gofundme, and WePay, and that subscriber information is held confidential in Mailchimp. I don't share any of that information, and it is not linked to Google Analytics.
These changes weren't prompted by a complaint or expressed concern or a new fear regarding internet privacy. Rather, it is really something I've wanted to do from the beginning - it's just taken time to evolve. The privacy of the people that I meet in life is important to me, and I think about how strange it really would be if someone were to take a picture or video of me, or write a story about me, and share it with anyone other than trusted family and friends. Often that line is crossed in social media, often accidentally, but I am aware of that complexity. My hope is that anyone - locally in the US or in Ecuador - would have the confidence that interactions with me are shared with discretion.
In viewing an array of sites of charitable and religious organizations, I'm confident that these changes puts the website on the more privacy-sensitive end of the spectrum. However, nothing is perfect, and although I am very creative with whatever resources I have, they are limited. I think this is a good next step forward, and something I will review in the coming months. It is a work in progress, as technology changes. In the meantime, please feel free to drop a note and let me know how you experience the changes.
I will keep you updated as things go forward in Ecuador. (You might notice the new calendar on the front page that keeps updates of events and happenings in the journey!) Please pray for me, drop a note anytime, and I think of you as I go along the journey.
Jerome