Below was a Forum Response from the Administrators of this ClassCreators website.
RE: Safety/Security of Information
Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 9:07 PM
All good questions Edward, thanks for raising them. I can tell you right now this will be a heavily read item because these questions and concerns are common. With that in mind, as you can imagine we've spent an enormous amount of time on safety, security, and privacy issues.
First: Click on FAQs above and then click the Questions About Privacy link. Most of the items there are not related to financials, but it's helpful for you to be well versed on that section prior to your teleconference.
Second: Regarding your statistical question, the answer is zero. I.E. in our history we've never had a single incident of identy theft, stolen credit card numbers, etc. There are two reasons for that. One, we've taken numerous internal measures to ensure private data stays private and the site is hack proof. Second, all financial transactions that happen on your site are fully secured by Geotrust. Geotrust is one of the leading online security organizations. When Classmates are asked to enter their credit card numbers they'll see the little lock appear on their browser indicating that the financial transaction is secured, and the Geotrust logo is also displayed.
FYI, if you're wondering what "secured" means specifically, that means that the financial data is scrambled (encrypted) as it travels through the Internet. It is only put back together when it reaches it's final destination. Thus anybody who could potentially be "easedropping" on the financial transaction can only pick up scrambled data. Although I don't think anybody can every say 100%, it would be next to impossible for even the best of hackers these days to decode that scrambled information.
If necessary, you can also tell them that the people behind Class Creator are all Internet veterans. Every single one of us has been doing this since the beginning of the web roughly 12 years ago. Every penny that's ever gone through this system has been delivered to it's destination, and that will continue to be the case. It would be hard to find a more honerable, ethical group of people than the people behind Class Creator. I hope this satisfactorily addresses your concerns.