Hi Brad and Team,

Would it be possible to create a security question for people who have not yet joined our website to prevent just anyone from joining? For example: "What was the last name of your high school principal during your freshman year?" Only the actual classmate would likely know the answer. I have a computer savvy person in my class who does not want to update his profile because he thinks just anyone will come along and pose as a classmate who has not yet joined the website and then be able to obtain his personal information.

Thanks,

Tara

We thought about that and decided against it for 2 reasons:

1) At least some Admins will wind up creating questions that at least some Classmates don't know the answer to. "Who was our school's principal" and things like that may seem obvious, but time has a way of making memories fade...

2) If you try to keep the question really obvious, then it becomes easy for somebody else to figure out anyway, and thus they're going to walk right into your web site.

This is exactly why we created the "New Classmate Verification" feature under your Preferences area, which we also often refer to as the "anti hijacking feature." Click your Preferences link and take a look -- it's exactly what you're looking for.

By the way, our system never gives out a Classmate's personal information by default. I.E. things like telephone number and email address are never displayed no matter what. That type of information can be tranded amongst Classmates privagtely.

Brad Switzer wrote:

By way of clarification, while it is true that e-mail address is NOT displayed under any circumstance, telephone number is displayed to logged on classmates if you have chosen to share your contact information with them.

Good point. It is NOT displayed though if the New Classmate Verification feature has been enabled, and the new member has not yet been validated.

I found it! Yay! Thanks a bunch for your assistance!

Tara,
The New Classmate Verification feature is excellent but an alternative I use is to ask the question "What years were you at the school?" and make it one of the questions that has to be answered on their Profile. That might alert them to the fact that you might be checking up on them and they might think twice if they're not who they say they are. If you do have class year lists you can check against those but I also find that someone else from the same year they say they belong to will know something about them that will confirm who they say they are. I then e-mail them, or get the classmate to e-mail them, and pose the question. If they can't answer, or won't, they're out!

Sounds long-winded, I know, but it's worked so far. It could be a problem if, like me, you open up the site to all years. I've got a couple of old boys in their 80s whose word I guess I'm just going to have to take when they give their name!