An awful lot of work is now missing.
Anne Bartlett-Bragg is not a child pornographer. Recently, however, she was treated as one when she and other community members were locked out of her all her Ning social networks in connection with what Ning says was a child pornography investigation into one of the networks.
Her story is a warning for anyone relying on cloud computing — outsourcing the storage of information or provision of software to online providers like Google (Google Docs, Gmail, etc.).
Ning is one such provider: it allows users to form their own customisable social networks. Bartlett-Bragg liked their networks so much she set up “five to 10” communities on the site for students (she is a consultant at UTS) and clients.
On 10 February this year Bartlett-Bragg found she couldn’t get into any of her communities on Ning. Every time she tried to log on she received a message saying:
“This social network has been taken offline by its owner. It’s likely that the owner will bring it back online shortly.”
But she was the owner, she hadn’t taken it down, and she didn’t want it online shortly: she needed it online now. Her clients and students couldn’t get into the networks either.
“Students were trying to access work. We all panicked,” Bartlett-Brown says.
She wrote to Ning immediately. “An awful lot of work is now missing,” she told them. It would be six more emails before she found out her account had been suspended owing to a link to child pornography.
As any self-respecting social networker would do, Bartlett-Bragg also turned to Twitter to ask if anyone else was having trouble with the site. They weren’t but user @lauraoatning, a “community advocate” at Ning, responded and said she would look into it.
Bartlett-Brown was now pursuing a solution through the Ning help centre and through @lauraoatning but, having taken Bartlett-Brown’s details, @lauraoatning quickly went quiet.
And Bartlett-Brown was having no joy with the help desk either. Their first email came within minutes of her raising the issue, a service level Bartlett-Brown continues to acknowledge as exceptional, especially for a free account.
It didn’t help, however: Courtenay from “the Ning Team” suggested that Bartlett-Brown log in and take her communities online again. But, as Bartlett-Brown had said in her original message, she couldn’t log in. When she tried she got one of a variety of messages: sometimes the site said there was no such user, other times it said the password was invalid.
Finally she received an email from Alex of the Ning Team, who wrote breezily:
“Your account has been re-enabled and all of your networks are back online! We temporarily removed your account in order to appropriately investigate the posting of some illegal content on your network.”
The network in question was a little-used community restricted to members of the family. (Ning says the network was set to public. Bartlett-Brown, a “very confident” Ning user, is adamant that it was not. “I educate other people about this,” she says.)
Unsurprisingly Bartlett-Brown was alarmed by the report of illegal activity. She replied quickly,
“What was the inappropriate content! I’m really really concerned about this!!! Would really appreciate some more information!”
It was only after this that Bartlett-Brown was told that the content was “suspected child pornography” and that the [US] National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had been notified.
This gave rise to concern on Bartlett-Bragg’s part that it was she, as the network creator, who had been reported to the US authorities. “What if I try to get a US visa?” she asks.
Contacted for this post, Jason Rosenthal, SVP of Business Operations for Ning, offers immediate reassurance on that point, “We reported the person who was the source of the illegal content to the authorities, not Anne herself.”
He also underlined, “The entire process from when Anne first contacted us to when we completed the investigation and restored access to all of her social networks took less than 12 hours.”
The potential impact of shutting down a network for 12 hour period, however, is huge. The “popular networks” link on the Ning homepage shows networks with hundreds of thousands of members.
As Twitter user @azeem estimated when Gmail went down in February, the economic cost can be enormous:
azeem: #gmail let’s count the cost. 25m users, 33% affected; average of $50 per hour lost productivity = $415m per hour economic cost.
Free services cease to be free very quickly when they go out. Productivity suffers and data may not be completely restored. In Bartlett-Brown’s case she is still dealing with irksome problems after the restoration of her networks: entries have been corrupted with inaccurate dates, messing up chronology and archiving.
The exchanges between Ning and Bartlett-Brown also failed to explain why all her networks would be disabled and all users shut-out of them because one had been poisoned.
“I’d just prefer to see a process that notifies the network creator – rather than banning me too. And then doesn’t take all my other networks offline as well,” she wrote, keeping her cool. “As I wasn’t the offender.. it seems a very harsh knee jerk reaction… makes me feel like a criminal.”
Ning says it has reviewed and changed its policies in the light of the incident and Bartlett-Brown’s suggestions. “In response to our experience with Anne, we’ve actually changed our policy so that going forward, we would only disable the member suspected of illegal activity rather than the entire network itself,” Rosenthal says.
The fact remains that users are coming to rely on services that their providers are under no obligation to maintain but where the effect of withdrawl is significant.
Are you one of them? What are your experiences? And what are you doing to mitigate against a #gfail?
What great news that Ning have changed their policies – I’m pleased to hear this!
I’d just like to point out that it was 48hrs I was offline – from when I reported it to customer service. I had actually been trying to reset my password and access Ning for a couple of days before that!
The entire experience has certainly been an important lesson for anyone using services like these for anything other than lightweight social networking – the potential for compromised data and privacy are critical concerns that need to be evaluated.
Thanks for changing your policies Ning!
Anne BB
Jack,
Provocative post. However, I see that you left out the most important aspect of what I wrote to you in my note below:
“As I’m sure you can imagine, we go to great lengths to keep Ning a safe environment for all of our Network Creators and Members and we take reports of illegal content very seriously. Our first priority when we are made aware of these types of images on a social network on Ning is to remove access to the content and investigate the social network it appears on.”
Thanks,
Jason
Hi Jack,
Thanks for contacting us about this. I’m responsible for all of our Network Creator and Member-facing activity at Ning and wanted to reach out to you personally on this.
As I’m sure you can imagine, we go to great lengths to keep Ning a safe environment for all of our Network Creators and Members and we take reports of illegal content very seriously. Our first priority when we are made aware of these types of images on a social network on Ning is to remove access to the content and investigate the social network it appears on. Once we have investigated a social network and determine what the issue is, we take the appropriate actions as dictated by law. In Anne’s case, we disabled access to her social network as soon as we were notified of the illegal content. When we reviewed her social network, it became clear that the illegal content came from someone who had infiltrated Anne’s social network rather than Anne herself. Once we were able to determine this, we worked with her to get her social networks up and running again as soon as possible. As you can see from the email thread that Anne forwarded you, the entire process from when Anne first contacted us to when we completed the investigation and restored access to all of her social networks took less than 12 hours. Also, I wanted to clarify one question you raise in your note. We reported the person who was the source of the illegal content to the authorities, not Anne herself.
These issues can be difficult and quite sensitive. We are constantly refining our processes around this type of activity so that we can efficiently investigate, report, and ultimately eliminate this type of content from Ning quickly while minimizing the effect on members that have nothing to do with this activity. In response to our experience with Anne, we’ve actually changed our policy so that going forward, we would only disable the member suspected of illegal activity rather than the entire network itself.
I hope this answers your questions. If you have any further questions, please let me know, I’d be happy to arrange a call to discuss.
Thanks,
Jason
Jason, I think it was clear from your actions what you considered your priorities to be. What the rest of us take issue with is your comfort in shutting down a whole community while you investigate. It compounds the offence that you did so without notice or explanation; in fact you did the opposite — misleading users with inaccurate notices about the state of the community and their usernames/passwords. On top of that you shut down unrelated communities.
Ning is a great free service but people need to be aware that they may be trusting their material to an unaccountable sheriff. On the subject of security on Ning, for instance, we have your claim that Bartlett-Brown left her network public and her assertion that she did not. If she is correct that is a security question that needs an answer.