# Enforce email verification for public community sign ups

https://help.circle.so/p/audience/onboarding/enforce-email-verification-for-public-community-sign-ups

Category: [Audience](https://help.circle.so/p/audience) › [Onboarding](https://help.circle.so/p/audience/onboarding)

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_Last updated: February 15, 2024_

Enforcing email verification for sign ups to your public community helps you prevent individuals with undeliverable emails from completing their accounts and joining the community.

## **Key things to know about email verification**

By requiring individuals to verify their email, you can significantly reduce the number of accounts with undeliverable emails from attempting to join and carry out malicious activities within your public community.

The email verification feature is available only to communities that meet the following conditions:

- Community visibility is set to public, and SSO integration is disabled.

- The **Allow visitors to sign up** toggle is enabled in the [general settings](/p/basics/community-access/set-up-a-public-community).

When this feature is enabled, it applies to the following sign up methods:

- Public sign ups

- Sign up via paywall purchases

- Invitation links

- Individual invites

- Bulk invites

- Invite member actions via Zapier

When email verification is enabled for new sign ups, the process for members is as follows:

- After filling out their account details and submitting the sign up form, new members will be directed to the email verification step.

- Members will receive a six-digit authentication code sent to their email address. They must confirm their email address by entering the authentication code on the email verification step.

- Once the authentication code is successfully confirmed, members are directed to the profile creation page to complete their profile and activate their community account.

If a member fails to verify the code, they cannot activate their account or gain access to the community. In this case, their member account will remain in an _invited status_. As an admin, you can[](/p/audience/member-management/removing-members-from-your-community)[deactivate](/p/audience/member-management/removing-members-from-your-community) any member account that is in invited status from the community by navigating to the **Invited** tab on the **Manage audience** page. Once deactivated, members won’t be able to access the community.

## **Enable email verification**

To turn on the email verification, follow these steps:

1. Click the community name or logo in the top-left corner and select **Settings.**

2. Scroll down to the **Defaults** section and turn on the **Enforce email verification for new signups** toggle.

3. Click **Save changes**.

## Relevant articles

- [Set up a public community](/p/basics/community-access/set-up-a-public-community)

- [Enable visitors to preview and join your public community](/p/basics/community-access/enable-visitors-to-preview-and-join-your-public-community)