Subscription bombing and abuse prevention

A few weeks ago ProPublica was the victim of a subscription bomb attack. Julia Angwin found my blog post on the subject and contacted me to talk about the post. We spent an hour or so on the phone and I shared some of the information we had on the problem. Julie told me she was interested in investigating this further problem further. Today, ProPublica published Cheap Tricks: the Low Cost of Internet Harassment.
For those of us deeply involved in the issue, there isn’t too much that comes as a surprise in that article. But it’s a good introduction to folks who may not be aware of the existence of subscription bombing.

Julia does mention something I have been thinking about: abuse and anonymity online. Can we continue to have anonymous or  pseudonymous identities on the Internet? Should we?
One of the challenges a lot of companies are struggling with is that anonymity can protect oppressors as well as their targets. How do we support “good” anonymity without enabling “bad” anonymity? I’ve always thought anonymity was an overall good and the fact that it’s abused sometimes didn’t mean it should be taken away. Banning anonymity online might seem to fix the problem of abuse, except it really doesn’t and it comes with its own set of problems.
Let’s be honest, these are hard questions and ones that do need to be addressed. A lot of the tools abuse and security desks currently have rely on volume of complaints. This can result in the targets getting shut down due to false complaints while the perpetrators keep their accounts open. It means subscription bombs can target a few individuals and occur undetected for months.
Big companies in Silicon Valley love to rely on their algorithms and machine learning and AI and code to automate things. But the automation only works after you create working processes. Throwing code at the problem doesn’t work unless you have a picture of the scope of the problem. And a reliance on code ends up with Facebook asking people to upload nudes of themselves to prevent nudes on Facebook. Likewise, throwing cheap labor at the problem isn’t a solution, either.
I don’t have the answers, I don’t think anyone does. But we need to think harder about these problems and address them sooner rather than later. The internet is too important to let abusers break it.

Related Posts

Social marketing

The following showed up in my mailbox a few moments ago
I commented to Steve that social marketing was about connecting with people, and businesses aren’t people. That’s why social marketing for B2B is hard: there are no people involved. Or, as he pointed out, B2B in the social space is bot to bot marketing.

Of course, there aren’t literal bots behind most brands. In the B2C space, brands have cultivated a social media presence that personifies the business in a way that appeals to their consumers. But that’s the brand projecting onto people and responding to people. When a business tries to connect to a business, it’s just two puppets talking.
Sure, there are small businesses where there isn’t the case. But generally businesses aren’t on social media to consume marketing. They’re on social media to generate marketing. They aren’t targets because you can’t market to a puppet.

Read More

Poor delivery at Gmail but no where else

I’ve mentioned before that I can often tell what ISP is making filter changes by what my calls are about. The last few weeks it’s been Gmail where folks are struggling to get to the inbox. One of the things most clients and potential clients have mentioned is that they’re not having any problems at the other major ISPs.

Read More

Listbombing Webinar

Earlier this week I gave a webinar hosted by the EEC and the DMA discussing the listbombing problem. They will be making the recording available later this week and I will link to it then.
I wish I could say the issue was done and over with and that it was something we don’t have to worry about any longer. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Attacks are ongoing. Many of them are being caught and mitigated, but they’re still occurring.
We can’t let up our guard, though. Attackers will adapt to the mitigations and negate them.
And remember, listbombing is a sign that your subscription process is not collecting accurate data. If Evil Bob or Dumb Bob can give you Real Bob’s address then your data is all suspect. The problem is somewhat in the form, but it’s also in the whole process. What steps can you take to verify data without creating too much friction in the process?
This is an opportunity for forward thinking companies to reconsider their subscription and address acquisition processes. How do we get Bob’s address and information without Evil Bob or Dumb Bob giving us bad data and without contributing to the overall abuse online.
 

Read More