UPDATE: Access Code and Hide from Directory Features Removed

On November 25, 2013, we removed the Access Code and Hide from Directory features from Privacy settings options. We previously messaged this via site-wide alert to all broadcasters, blog, and Twitter.

To add some color as to how we came to this decision:

• As we spread to more platforms (iOS, Android, Xbox, etc) and updated development technology, this older code wasn’t easily portable.

• Access Codes were stored and shared in plain text, which is not a security practice we wanted to continue.

• We found that far less than 1% of our broadcasters used this feature, and often it was not used as intended.

Since November 25, we’ve received a number of support requests from users who had set these features and were still hidden from the directory. We found the settings hadn’t been entirely cleared on our end. As of December 5, 2013, we have cleared all stored Access Codes and resurfaced the Hide from Directory option for those of you who had this set prior to the feature removal. If you disable the Hide from Directory option, you will not be able to use it again in the future.

You can still block private messages from channels that you do not follow via Privacy settings.

We know that for those of you who used this feature, it was very important. We’ll be looking for better ways to bring private streaming back in the future.

Thanks for understanding!