With the advent of the new e-mail/message system, an old complaint has surfaced. Some members are saying that we can read their e-mail messages anytime we wish to do so.

Could you please make a statement regarding this that I can send along to the members to help allay the fears on this issue?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Who is the "we" in your question above? I'm assuming by "we" you mean Site Administrators. If so, that's not the case. Administrators can NOT log into Classmate accounts unless they know the Classmate's password. As you'll note in any Classmate details page, passwords are starred out. Thus, you can't log in. And thus you can't read somebody's private class email. It's pretty much that simple. You can tell your Classmates that only the Classmate him or herself has access to their own class email. No Administrators or any other Classmates can get into their personal email box -- just them.

I did initially just mean Site Admin and knew from experience that we had no way of getting into these messages.

I guess I'm just trying to assure them that no one else can get to their messages either. The accuser says she had a few computer classes at college and knows better.

Who the heck cares. Are you going to believe Brad who knows what he's talking about or someone "in college"

Although I certainly believe Brad's statement, in the end it's the members of my class who are asking for and deserving of an answer, no matter how valid or invalid their accusations are.

There are a lot of fears about computers and the internet and it doesn't help to just dismiss them as coming from the uninitiated or pseudo-experts. Since this concern is placed on the Message Forum, how I treat this inquiry reflects upon me, on the site and upon ClassCreator.

I have already posted Brad's first answer and have directly e-mailed the concerned party about this issue. This is not the first time I've heard worries about the security and privacy of site pages and probably won't be the last. But, if I don't provide a reasonable and calming answer, then I'll leave the impression that there is some substance to these allegations.

One thing I can say is bugs certainly have snuck into the system before. And we'd be happy to squash any if they're identified. Thus I would ask this person to describe specifically how somebody other than the Classmate can get into the Classmate's email. I'll be very surprised if she can. The only thing I can imagine is she has or has guessed somebody's password, which isn't so much of a security conern as it is somebody used an insecure password.

Just wondering, is it possible they're concerned about US reading their email, i.e. people like me or other Class Creator staff? If that's the case then they're exactly right. I can read their email and so can everybody else who works for Class Creator. Mind you, we'd have absolutely zero interest in doing so, nor would we have the time anyway considering 10s of thousands of messages pass through the system daily. Not to mention it's our policy not to. But technically, we could.

Just FYI, even if an email bounces back to the Administrator that was from one Classmate to another Classmate (due to non deliverability issues), we hide the message body so the Admin can't read that person's private message. We've gone to significant extremes to ensure privacy in the email system and the entire Class Creator sytem at large.

I LOVE the new email/message system!

It's just what a lot of my classmates have been wanting!

We just got ours today!

I had one person tell me what a great job I did! LOL!

I had to fess up that it wasn't me that you were making improvements! It looks wonderful!

Now that I know what she is talking about, maybe I will just leave it at thanks! LOL!

No, I've been telling them that ever since we started our site, that the company was making changes as we were building our website. I am amazed that we haven't run into each other!

But, so far, knock on wood, it's been seamless!

Thanks again!
Norma

Very welcome. When new features launch they launch for all sites at the same time. We're pretty good about ongoing development not messing up what you currently have going. Well, most of the time, anyway.