Internet security CEO explains why harassed complainants should’ve used fake names
Suggestion comes after complainants were harassed and threatened when the sites they reported ended up with their contact information
Matthew Prince, the CEO of internet security company CloudFlare, issued an interesting statement this weekend after an article published last week called his company out on how it handles complaints.
People who submitted complaints to CloudFlare about the various websites it protects were getting harassed and threatened, the article by Ken Schwencke in ProPublica documented.
CloudFlare is a company that helps websites serve up content faster while protecting their sites from hackers. It doesn’t host websites themselves.
At issue was CloudFlare’s policy on handling complaints of abuse, which range from copyright disputes, to alerts of illegal content like sexual child abuse, to complaints of harassment by alleged hate-speech sites.
For instance, one person complained after a site asked its readers to harass Twitter users after the election, Schwencke reported. That person was surprised to discover that her contact information wound up in the hands of that alleged hate site.
People who complained about such alleged hate sites would often be subjected to harassment, online abuse, even threats, Schwencke reported.