Greetings everyone,

I have a situation that's come up twice now, and wonder if there is an easy (or any) way to eliminate someone from coming onto our site, choosing a name randomly and stealing their identify for the purpose of having access to our site.

Specifically, someone trolls our classmate list for someone who hasn't "claimed" login setup, and they will enter their own fictitious information.

While I don't really care about them specifically, because I can just delete them, the problem arises in not knowing which classmate they've stolen. Since the name has been changed we can't sift through to re-add the missing classmate. Our class was 1200+ students so it just isn't feasible trying to figure it out.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Carmela

From time to time, this becomes an issue. When it does, we recommend that you use the New Classmate Verification feature on your Preferences page and select Do Not Allow.

Further details:

DO NOT ALLOW new subscribing Classmates to view password protected areas of the web site, access any restricted Classmate Profiles, send or receive emails, post messages in forums, participate in Live Chat, and hide Profile information from other Classmates until the new Classmate's identity has been verified. (Note: If you select this option, a new "Verified" field will appear in the Classmate's Profile area that only you, the Site Administrator, can see. When a new Classmate joins your site and the Classmate's identify has been confirmed, toggle the "Verified" field to "yes". The default will remain "no" until you do this. Once toggled to "yes" the new Classmate will be granted access to restricted areas of your site.

Carmela,
One more tidbit that addresses your second concern:
With Admin Verify turned on, you have the options to (1) verify a new member so they are fully functional, (2) to NOT verify them (and leave them with no permissions to view profiles or restricted pages + the fact that they won't show up on the missing or class profile list), or to (3) Revert that ID to it's original state. That last option should take the hijacked ID back to an unregistered classmate with the name it began with.

We had a few 'imposters' try to get in some time ago.
If your site has been up for a while, you could always explain to them that there have been some imposters try to join.
You could then ask them some specific questions about teachers, administrators, etc. that isn't available to the general public or visible on your public page.
E. G. - ask:
Who is our assistant principal?
Who did you have for English?
Etc.
While this won't prevent people familiar with the school [other classes perhaps] from attempting to 'join,' it might help.
Yet another option is to ask them to call you [who doesn't have a cellphone these days?] and some personal interaction might be able to detect an imposter - and if they, DON'T call, they might just be an imposter!

When you choose the Verity Classmates option, you can choose to verify ALL of the current classmates so that you don't have to go through all 1200 classmates and verify each one.

I receive a notification each time a member joins or updates their contact information. It gives the previous info and the new info. I have noticed two over eight years.

I do have a request regarding new members. In that notification, could we receive the IP address? Checking that against the address (city/state) would be a plus.