Contacting School Friends (Australian Schools)

If you want to contact fellow class members, you could consider registering with the Schoolfriends.com.au website.

Doing things via Schoolfriends.com.au means that you can contact school friends without directly giving them your contact details, and they can contact you. If the person you really want to contact is not on Schoolfriends, maybe somebody else interesting is. On the down side, Schoolfriends is not currently (21/6/02) indexed by Google, so typing, e.g. "Robert Byrn" Marsden, to pick a registered name at random, into Google will not find Schoolfriends.com.au (though it will find my Marsden Class-of-65 page - which points to the page you are reading - but on the other hand, Schoolfriends.com.au will have biographical details for some of those who are registered). I haven't checked search engines other than Google.

This link takes you to my disclaimer

What you get if you register but don't pay

At present (June 2002, refers to original Schoolfriends.com.au site), registration allows you, among other things, to provide your details - e.g. which schools you went to and when - and find out who else is registered - e.g. from the schools/years you were in, and see their details, which might include pictures, biography, etc., or might not. If any paid-up member sends you a message, you can reply to it, but you can't initiate a message. You can also search for individuals or schools by name and a few other things. And if your long-lost friend suddenly shows up on Schoolfriends, you can pay and then send a message.

Don't feel bad about not paying if this is your choice - Schoolfriends is at least partly funded by selling advertising; since they know from your registration details things like when you left school, they are in a position to target the advertising efficiently, which obviously advertisers like. If you've listed clubs and workplaces, they're even better place for targeted marketing.

Caveats/Tips

My statement above that you can contact school friends via Schoolfriends without directly giving them your contact details assumes that there are no serious flaws in the implementation of the Schoolfriends website. In fact, there are (or have been) at least the following problems:

• This is probably obvious, but: Schoolfriends have no way of checking if a member's name is really what they say it is. So you want to make very sure that the person that you are communicating with really is your old friend, before spilling your deepest secrets to them, sending them money, or whatever. :-) I notice that on 19/6/2002 there was registered at James Ruse Agricultural High School/NSW, an individual claiming the name of Ivan Erection, with implausible details. At Fort Street High School, there was someone by the name of ";dslafj;dlsafj, ;alksjdf;alsfj". There were also two Darth Vaders. No Clark Kent or Mickey Mouse anywhere, though, and only one each of Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck, both plausible-looking. The "Richard Head" who claims to have been attending Darwin Adventist School Casuarina, NT since 1928 (and still attending) must be regarded as at least slightly suspicious ...
  Update 17/3/03: we're now up to 4 Darth Vaders, still 1 Ivan Erection, but the Richard Head in Darwin has disappeared. And they've got a few King Kongs, I notice.
  Update 3/2/04: Looks like they've cleaned up some of the names I mentioned, though I notice there is now a rash of Bart and Homer Simpsons. And a couple of implausible John Howards (along with lots of legit ones).

• Password not secure: The web form Schoolfriends gets you to type your password into is not on a secure page (i.e. your password is not encrypted when it is sent). In theory, this means that your password could be intercepted by a bad guy, who could then pose as you within Schoolfriends - e.g. send bogus messages in your name / read your messages. Presumably, however, the average bad guy has "better" things to do with their time, like e-breaking into financial institutions, government agencies, etc. :-( But you might want to think twice about using the same password for both Schoolfriends and, say, your bank.

• People can register twice for the same school: If you register two or more times for the same school, then (1) Schoolfriends lets you! and (2) your name appears twice in the list of students from that school. This is harmless, as messages sent by clicking either "you" should reach you, unless of course you registered again because you changed your e-mail provider. (If this happens to you, you can ask Schoolfriends to get rid of the old entry, by clicking "Contact us" at the foot of the login page, and then choosing an appropriate subject for your message, e.g. "remove registration".) A glance at such a person's details will reveal if they have listed twice at the same school. If not, read on ...

• Other people can register as you: There are other ways of getting your name listed twice, like someone else registering as you, but using e.g. a free hotmail address together with details from your listing (see two paragraphs above). In this case, if one of your friends sends a message to the "wrong" you, you won't get it - the hoaxer gets it instead.

• Problems with school name abbreviations: Particular case of the problem described above: it looks like some schools with names of a form similar to "St <whoever>'s College" may end up having an entry "St <whoever>s College". The "School Search Results" for these variations do not seem to overlap: if you don't realise the problem might exist, you are not warned in any way. They do now seem to be converting all "Saint Whatever"s in school names into "St Whatever", and maybe similarly for "Mount" and "Mt". No consistent handling of "Street" and "St" as far as I can see (17/3/2003) though - there's Cleveland St Primary School WA, but Cleveland Street Primary School NSW.

• Multiple school registrations: Schoolfriends allows people to register the same school more than once. For example, "Marsden High School/NSW" currently (19/6/2002) appears twice, and there is also "marsden high school/NSW". Of these three, on 19/6/02 one had over a thousand registrants, one had 3 and the other just one. Moral: check out the alternatives before registering (and/or after registering - you can change your details) and if looking to see if a friend has joined up yet, check all the variations of the school (and/or search for them by name).

• In time, it is likely that the people who run Schoolfriends will fix some of these problems, or at least correct the current instances of it. I notice (15/3/2003) that we are back to just a single version of Marsden High School/NSW, for example. Presumably there is nothing to stop someone from mis-typing their school's name (e.g. Mrasden instead of Marsden) ...

• Check the year after you finished high school: Some of your friends may have repeated their final year of high school, or taken longer than minimum time at uni. It can pay off to check years adjacent to the one in which you thought they graduated. They might have repeated their last year of high school even if they passed their final exam, in order to improve their results, e.g. to get into some tertiary course. Once again, searching by name might help find them.

Disclaimer

I have no connection with Schoolfriends.com.au other than having registered with them, and this is information, not an endorsement. (Heavy Bit): The information on this page is provided in the belief that it is true, and may be helpful, but I accept no responsibility for any actions that you may take on the basis of what you have read here: you should therefore check the facts and make your own informed judgement as to whether Schoolfriends.com.au is suitable for your purposes.

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