Slack has added a new feature called “Slack Connect” that lets you exchange direct messages (DMs) or create shared channels with people who work outside your company. The company said in a statement: “Slack Connect is a new way for organizations to promote their businesses and communicate with their customers, partners, and vendors, as quickly and easily as they interact with their colleagues on the platform.
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How does Slack Connect work?
When you log in to Slack, you’ll see a new “Slack Connect” section in the sidebar, which when tapped will bring up a screen where you can create a shared channel or exchange DMs with external users. As with other messaging apps, to send DMs, you first send an invitation to another user via your email address. If the user accepts the invitation, a new chat will appear, allowing you to communicate directly with them.
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This is a very useful feature, but it can also become annoying or even dangerous. Slack Connect may pose security risks, as it can be abused by spammers, aggressive marketers, and even hackers who will try to trick you into revealing company secrets.
Slack offers you a lot of configuration options, and you can disable this feature. To do this, click on your company name in the app, go to “Settings and administration,” and then “Workspace settings.
From here, select the “Permissions”.
You’ll now be able to either configure Slack Connect for channels by unchecking “Enable new shared channels”to disable all content, or by changing the default from “Everyone” to something more restrictive. This is clearly a feature that could be put to good use, but it’s best to leave it to admins to make decisions about sharing channels with other organizations.
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Scroll down and then uncheck “Enable file uploads and sharing” to prevent file sharing with other companies.
Then, uncheck “Enable Slack Connect for DMs” to disable the ability to send or receive messages from people outside your company.
You can also leave Slack Connect for instant messaging enabled, but only allow admins to use it if you want. However, this probably takes away most of the power of the feature.
