I had a sign-up last night from one of our classmates. Then shortly after I received a message from a guy telling me it was him who had signed up and NOT our classmate:

Brad,

I am not brian peterson or whoever, it was reallythis easy to get on your site by setting up a fake gmail account and sayign I was him.

I was thinking of using Class creator, they charge and I need assurances that we only get our real classmates.

Please reset Brian's account as he may want to somedyay sign up.

Thanks and sorry for the "hack"

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What's the world coming to these days??

Hi Brad,

I'm not sure why anyone would waste your time or their own like that. They must not understand the various privacy levels that are available to each site. Administrators have the option of adding a verification process. I'm including a link to the FAQs about this topic to make sure all admins know their options for increasing security levels if they wish.

http://www.classcreator.com/faqs.html#Privacy

Thanks for the response and FAQ's, Jessica.

I think this guy was just trying to be cocky. I probably need to add the verification process to our site and then tell the guy to try again.

When verifying, I usually go further than just a legitimate looking e-mail address. A birthdate and phone number always help.

Just to clarify, the New Classmate Verification feature (sometimes what we refer to as the anti hijacking feature) will not stop an imposter from assuming one of the unused names on your Class List. The only sure fire way to do that is to password protect your Classmate Profiles page and then give out your system password to only Classmate's you've pre verified. I don't personally recommend going to this extreme, as it creates quite a bit of work in getting your Classmates joined up, but the option is there if you want absolute, total security.

A good intermediate measure, which I do recommend, is the New Classmate Verification feature. A name can still be "hijacked", but that individual is rendered powerless to do anything on the site once they've joined until you've personally verified them. I.E. they cannot see password protected site pages, they cannot see restricted Classmate Profiles, then cannot contact Classmates with restricted Profiles, etc. If and when this happens simply delete the imposter and add the name back to your Class List so the real Classmate can use it. No real harm done, other than the imposter has caused a slight annoyance for the Administrator.

We've made these types of privacy levels for Admins, and additional privacy levels for Classmates, available because classes have different desires and needs, and sometimes an Admin who never expected to need a higher security level all of a sudden finds themselves in a boat where they do -- that's why you've got the options. Any of these privacy features can be turned on or off as needed.