InternetNeverSleeps
Los Angeles, CA
Female, 38
I oversaw all on site safety and security concerns for one of the largest social networks in the world. In the wild west of the internet, I had to develop policies and guidelines on how to deal with even the weirdest issues, work with law enforcement, meet with our government and address all the urgent issues that can pop up. My teams were the 911 of the internet, if you will, responding to the craziest of issues.
Not really - using your example, I will explain why. First, we can't really determine (nor should we) if that is real cocaine (or say, pixie stick sugar). Second, the profile might claim the user lives in Miami, but we can't verify that (even if IP logs show a Miami-ish location, they could be using a proxy). Also, even if we reached out to local law enforcement with this information, we would still require a subpoena to release anything that would help law enforcement actually locate this person (such as their IP logs or email address). Law enforcement is already incredibly swamped with all the real-life crime/issues going on to deal with all the online activity going on, so no way are they going to take on this case knowing they have to do all this extra work for a potential, non confirmed, or as you said, suggested, crime. A major exception to this rule is child pornography. As our site proactively reviewed image content being uploaded to the site, we would come across questionable images. It is the law that we immediately report any child pornography to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), who has their own law enforcement agents assigned to them (I.C.E.). Even if we are not 100% sure that it is an underage person, it doesn't matter - if it raises a red flag, we don't take chances and report it.
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Hey Ed Duz, You would think that would be a huge issue, and we thought it would be, too. But! It didn't - by that time, everyone was extra security conscious about what kind of issues apps could lead to. Almost overly cautious. So because of that, apps ended up being the least of our concerns. It was built in a way that it was very 'gated'. The apps were heavily reviewed for security and content issues before being authorized, and it was very easy to deactivate them in the event there was an issue. Honestly, I can't think of any major app related security or safety concern that came up. I think there was a content issue or two (ie a picture of boobies being distributed by an app) but that was about it. At least or our site! But I have been following all other major sites and haven't seen any issues, either.
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The biggest security issue I see that is still plaguing social network sites (and many other types of sites) are phishing attempts. I've seen very successful phishing schemes that result in thousands of user account login information, which then results in a bot automatically logging into that user's account and sending out spam. Cross site scripting (xss) hacks are also annoying and have, in the past, run rampant (in one instance, about 1 Million profiles were affected in a short period of time). They are more annoying than malicious - I consider phishing worse in terms of what we experienced.
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When I started the job, I was only focusing on security issues (vulnerabilities, attackers, etc). I had no idea I'd go down the path of pedophiles, law enforcement issues, insane profiles, nutjob users, and content that you just can't un-see once it's seen. I had already been online for MANY many years (back in newsgroup days) so I already had a pretty strong inkling of the stuff out there. ;)
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Navy Officer (Former)
Just how educated is the typical US military serviceman?
School Teacher
Do you think teachers are underpaid? Why?
Border Patrol Agent
What's the most creative way you saw cartels getting drugs across the border?
I wouldn't worry about that. But clever people with their own web server logs could see what IP addresses look at their profile. ;-)
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I personally love LinkedIn and utilize it weekly. I think it does indeed have a bright future and meets a good niche in the social network arena.
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I think FB has definitely made a few things fairly concerning with user privacy and their oddly shifting security settings on their products. Half of me sides with the viewpoint that 'it's their website, they can do what they want, and nothing you post on the internet is truly private or sacred anyawys' and the other half is reviled and would leave FB if I wasn't so heavily integrated with it for my social life (haha).
Ultimately, companies are companies and they are out to make a buck. It's up to the end user to decide how comfortable they are with information about themselves being shared/distributed/etc.
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