Missionaries are required to close down all their personal accounts. Found this out from facebook a few days ago. Apparently he has to close down his facebook, skype, gmails, yahoo mail, hotmail, and whatever else account he has. He can't just hand it off to someone, he has to close it all down. He says this is the new policy. WTF. The church has missionaries who blog, has missionaries who facebook chat, and they even have their own facebook page and youtube page. Just ranting

Does this apply to all missionaries or did this mandate come from one Mission President, do you know? Also are they still allowed their blogs or are they back to just snail mail? Parents won't like this if there is no internet contact at all.

Yeah, it could be just that particular Mission President. If it were true Church-wide, I'd say that they'd be trying to limit internet exposure to the missionaries because of all the information we know is out there now.

At some point, the Church is just going to have to deal with it. They can't keep running from information which isn't going anywhere.

I can see them screening where they can go on the internet, but not shutting down their "faith promoting" blogs. In fact, one missionary I know was still posting from the MTC as of this weekend. He didn't mention any change. That's what makes me wonder if it's a local Mission President.

It probably is.

No surprise. Just one more way the cult exerts control over the members.

If local where is this happening, do you know?

I suspect this has to do with the amount of sensitive and personal information that is leaking from overly verbose missionaries that blab about everything that they did during their week- and then family members post everything on facebook, tumblr, blogger, etc. etc..

Below is an EXCERPT ( :) ) from the most recent email from my cousin who is currently serving in Italy: (translation below)

"Voi inoltrate le lettere a qualcuno? Non mi importa la risposta, NON LO FATE! ultimamente ci sono stati problemi, con i missionari che mandavano a casa le lettere e parlavano anche troppo delle persone, membri, simpatizzanti etc etc ei genitori pubblicavano sul loro blog la lettera così era accessibile a chiunque. E L'area ha chiamato per dirlo al Presidente di missione, in questa missione ci sono stati molti problemi."

"Do you forward the [emails] to anyone? The answer doesn't matter- DON'T. Lately, there have been problems, with missionaries that sent [emails] home talking too much about people, members, investigators etc. etc. and the parents would publish it on publicly accessible blogs. The Area called the Mission President telling him there have been lots of problems in this mission. "

Aside the fact I did exactly what my cousin asked me not to, it sounds like this is a new global policy.

In Italy, privacy is a huge issue- and I personally know lots of Missionaries who have blogged investigator, random contacts and member names with pictures on their blogs.

If someone really wanted to get TSCC in a pickle in Italy- all they would have to do is tip off the Guardia di Finanza that every missionary apartment contains a book full of names, dates of birth and phone numbers of non-consenting people and you could just sit back and watch the fireworks. The missions are very well aware that it is illegal- and we were specifically told during missionary trainings to NEVER mention the areabook to members or investigators.

The missionaries would have to start asking investigators 'Can we get your phone number as well as a signature giving us permission to save your information a book with your name, date of birth, address, family members, their dob's, possibly your picture, phone number, mobile number and write very intimate and personal details such as whether you're drinking coffee or whether you're sleeping with a person you are not legally married to and save this information for years so missionaries in years to come can harass you? Please sign here.'



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2012 12:08PM by suburbanmarx.

The answer is encryption alphabet soup..

PGP - pretty good privacy/public key encryption...
Triple DES
AES

AES is essentially unbreakable, although not very portable.
PGP is pretty portable, most email clients can integrate it.

All the church would see is garbage...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2012 03:22PM by John_Lyle.

OMG. That areabook or whatever the heck they're calling it, is CREEPY.

They are writing that crap down? Then telling these poor people investigating Mormonism, on whom they are spying, that God forgives and Jesus erases all sin? But that the LDS keeps a little black book about it, to blackmail them with?

Hypocrites, much?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2012 12:12PM by bookratt.

Or Eye-Oh-Pee Book for short.

Do ALL mission areas have one??
If so, it desperately needs to be publicized.

past and whether they were at all receptive. Most are not updated regularly and when they are it is in haphazard fashion. Most of the area books in my mission were worthless - outdated, confusing and often incomprehensible. They rarely contained enough information for us to evaluate whether we should go back to a house, much less litanies of personal information.

My nephew still has his FB account. It sounds more like a local MP rule.

Control, control, control....the MP must have enjoyed reading "1984" and adopted it as his MO.

Ron Burr

MP? Hell, howzabout the GAs and Uncle Monson? The Ministry of Disinformation is alive and well in SLC.

One of my nephews closed down all social media accounts and he's still months away from even submitting his papers. I don't know if this was under the advice of his bishop or just his dad (dad is a super missionary-type who has been jonesing for another mission since returning from his first). Poor kid has exmo potential too, hopefully his actual mission will open his eyes.

The "Technology Age" has been a BIG challenge to the TSCC.

I would just leave my accounts in place. No way I'd listen to them. What are they going to do, send missionaries home who don't comply? It's not like it's the church that's volunteering their time.

The missionaries should just put their smartphone in a hat and claim that spiritual light is mysteriously emanating from the hat.

This sounds like another Dutch boy and the dike exercise for the Mission Presidents and their lieutenants. They need some little sacrifice to extract from the elders, some token to prove who will put the brethren first etc.

What a game it all is.

Hahaha.

As Polygamy Porter said "google stones... revealed the truth".

Can you imagine the cult doing body searches on missionaries to stop them smuggling smartphones in?

I had moved and my computer was in storage. Then the library closed and I couldn't get into my free hotmail account. when I finally had my permanent house and could get on line again, my 'free' hotmail account was closed to me. I now pay $19 a year for it. It's not bad, but I wouldn't let a mission cause me to shut off my free e-mail accounts.

If the TSCC ordered you to shut your bank account it would be about the same thing. Your on line accounts are yours and yours alone. NO ONE has the right to order you to shut them down or let them expire!

Of course, to keep them alive, you have to check into them every six weeks or so...it was that way with my hotmail account I'd had since 1997

When I was on my mission we were not to visit any site except the church's webmail site and we were only supposed to write one email to our family and that was it. I don't think this is really new. Although demanding that they completely shut them down seems over the top. I don't know how they would enforce it except having every missionary delete their facebook on a computer in the mission home while the mission president watches.

Just ignore the rule but be careful never to use the missionary computers to post. Just sneak into a library now and then and make sure the people you are in contact with know it can't be reposted, etc. and use no pictures of yourself. Words can be in a kind of code.

My guess is that this is policy because missionaries sign up for email through the Church when the go on a mission and the email is monitored for catch phrases and words, and if one of those words comes up in an email, the Church then reads the individual message. Also, the Church can monitor paper mail.
And yes, the bit about them checking emails, etc - that's not conjecture - that's fact.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2012 06:17PM by dogeatdog.

E-mail is a given, but how can they monitor paper mail once the mishie has left the EmptySea?

.."but how can they monitor paper mail once the mishie has left the EmptySea?"

They have all mail sent thru the Mission office.

I got my first webmail account on my mission, and our presidency went back and forth between allowing us to and trying to shut down access. Most missionaries ignored the request to stop using email because so many of our families got the information so much quicker--instead of waiting on a two-week cycle, you could get news almost instantaneously.

I figure with overall access being very high, it's going to be tough to get missionaries to stop if they've got any rebellious bones in their bodies. I can understand privacy concerns, of course. As missionaries, though, we didn't think anything about it because they were our investigators! We were buddies! They want to know about the gospel, and look at me, ma! Look at me! I'm teaching people for Jesus! (Your money might almost be worth it!)

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored -- Huxley

Actually, it's his family that posts his emails home on the blog. He's somewhere in the Golden State. (I don't want to screw this one up for him.)

It's rather funny and pathetic to see the church attempt to rein in the wired generation. Luck to them with that.

On P-days in my area I always see the mishies on the computers at the public library, where they have full access to social media and pretty much whatever else they want.

If missionaries are anything like I was than they have practice telling a little white lie.

We can't have the missionaries speaking freely, why else memorize the discussions! It's called control. they can't control these avenues of communication, so they make them shut them all down. If we can't control, we can't keep them in line as good little soldiers spreading the lies of the Morg. I served a partial mission and being a girl, that was special, right? There was no individuality in the mission field; we were robots, memorizing what we could talk about, wehre we could go and how important we were to the church. It's the first time I was made to feel important as a woman in the Morg. I can understand why men stay, they have power over others when they are put into callings like Bishop, etc. It must be very satisfying...even if they can't feed their own family....they can have power over their individual flock. Control.