What a storm in a teacup this has been! With all the people voicing their opinions over our (now overturned) ban, we figure you are all owed an explanation. So grab a cuppa and settle in. This may take a while...
Firstly, thank-you to everyone who has shown support for us. While banned we watched the thread about us growing, and it was a very humbling, at times amusing, and also frustrating thing to see. It was humbling to have so many people say nice things about us, amusing to see how easily things get twisted and wrongly stated, and frustrating that we could not post in reply to correct any inaccuracies. But mostly, it was disappointing that in all of this the big picture was lost - the security issues with this site. But more on that later.
Here is the truth of this tale:
For a very long time now, we've known that security regarding profile pictures on this site was, well, pretty poor to say the least. A couple of times we had tried to discretely raise this with admin (along with a host of other more general bugs and faults) but nobody ever showed any interest in our concerns. At one point we were quite blatantly told that they weren't making any more development changes to this site because the new site was imminently due to be released. That was nearly a year ago now. So when Rose recently informed us that the new site was up and being tested in Canada, we thought we would take a look. To our dismay, we quickly discovered that on the new site all the forum posts and profile details were publicly accessible even without creating an account! We came back and checked the Australian site and sure enough - the same thing here. We then did a bit of searching on Google and discovered that yes, forum posts and profiles were being returned in Google search results.
A bit shocked by this, we felt that enough was enough and we wanted to raise this issue in the forums since messaging admin about it wasn't very fruitful. As we were replying to Rose's post, we thought it would be a good demonstration to show that images weren't secure by linking to one of her own images. We grabbed the URL of one of her public profile images (no, we didn't get this from Google; yes, we were logged in to SH at the time; no that doesn't make any difference as you can get them without being logged in) and put that URL in our post. Note: we did not make a copy of her image; we did not transfer it off the site; all we did is included a link to the image that she herself had made public.
Anyway, post made, and a while later we tried to visit the forums again and discovered that we were now banned. Here is the message that was displayed when we tried to log in:
Your account has been banned.
Reason: Hello This account as been banned, permanently for using another members picture, in a post, without their permission. Please email admin on this matter. http://www.swingersheaven.com.au/aup.html
Your ban will expire: 16th Feb 2024 - 2:50pm.
It seemed to us that the peculiar punctuation in the message had Rose written all over it. From here on we have assumed Rose was the one who banned us, but welcome any correction if that is not the case.
We did take a look at the AUP and by our interpretation there is nothing in there that prohibits what we had done. Ultimately though, that's a moot point. We are well aware that an AUP can never cover all circumstances and the administration team must have the flexibility to make calls on actions not explicitly covered by the AUP. We accept that we had done something that wasn't approved of. The irony is that we got a permanent ban for doing something that the site itself does not prevent the general public from doing!
At this point we'd like to go into some detail about exactly what is possible regarding your pictures and personal data on this site. Trust us - it's scary! However before our ban was lifted we asked admin if we could continue the security discussion. Although admin didn't explicitly say no, they didn't say yes either. They said any security concerns should be messaged directly to them. We think this is the right approach as well (which is why we hadn't gone public with this before now), and so we won't be posting all the nasty details publicly. It would appear that if something good has come of this whole debacle it's that the admin team is now willing to listen.
Anyway, because we felt we'd been harshly dealt with in this matter, we raised a support ticket to get our case reviewed. Here is what we wrote:
Hello,
This afternoon we (TemptedTwo) have been banned from the site. The reason given is that we used another member's photo in a post without their permission.
First and foremost, we apologise if we have upset anyone. That was not our intent.
Second to that (and we do stress that our apology is foremost), we are unclear exactly which part of the AUP or T&C we have breached to warrant an instant and permanent ban. The wording of the ban message is in keeping with the writing style of the moderator (TheRose) who we may have aggrieved, and so we wish our case to be reviewed independently.
We feel that we have been a couple that contributes more than many to the value of the site. For example, we have recently offered for free (and have provided on several occasions now) our photographic services to any and all who wish to get some better profile pictures. Yes, we have been vocal about ways we think the site could improve, but we are more than just a whiney voice. In the past we have been approached by Admin to ask if we would help test the new site. Although this never eventuated, we responded that we would be happy to offer our time to help.
Finally, the context around our offence today seems to be that we got banned for doing something that the site allows the general public to do (ie. access and link to images). The image we used was from Rose's public profile, so we did not post up anything that she had not already chosen to make public herself. In fact given that , we think we showed remarkable restraint in raising a topic for discussion while still protecting SH from general knowledge of critical security flaws.
If we are allowed back to the site we understand that posting to the forums images that people have already chosen to make public is unacceptable and we will not do so again in future (though clarification on this in the AUP would be good). A warning would have been ample to get that message across, so the chances are our time here is done, in which case we thank you for allowing us the time that we have spent here over the years. Please do reply either way.
Regards,
TemptedTwo
A day later, with no response yet, we started letting a few friends know that we had been banned. We asked lonelydad to pass on our farewells to a few others who we didn't have contact details for. lonelydad chose to do that by creating a forum post which many of you have now read and commented in.
In that forum post there were a number of incorrect comments made and we wish to correct them now. We had never been anything but truthful and factual when explaining to others what had happened, but messages can get distorted and misinterpreted as they travel from one person to another. Firstly, as you can see from our ban, it was always about linking to Rose's image and nothing to do with highlighting security flaws with the site. Secondly, we grabbed the URL for Rose's image from the site itself, not from a Google search. Google does not access images other than the thumbnails in your profile, and even these have filenames that are never likely to have them showing up in a Google search (the text content of forum posts and your profile will though) - at least not until Google implements image content recognition. Note, I said that Google DOES not access the full images - not that it CANNOT be done (using Rose's picture to demonstrate this is what got us banned).
Two days later we still hadn't heard anything. After politely prompting admin via our open support ticket (and lonelydad mentioned it in the forum thread too), Sarah did reply to say that they were willing to remove our ban.
Another day later and here we are, back on the site.
To finish, there are a few things we'd like to say (as if we haven't already said enough!).
Thank-you again to all those who showed support for us in this matter. We also respect the opinion of those who said "they broke a rule, they should live with the consequences". We agree with you. Nobody is above the law. However when we've seen people being repeatedly abusive, calling female users "fat whales" and worse, and they get multiple warnings before they are banned, we feel it was a bit harsh when we, with no malicious intent, were only linking to an image Rose had already made public and we get instantly banned for 10 years with no warning.
We also have some comments to make about unprofessional behaviour by a certain moderator (no names - wouldn't want to get banned for breaking the name and shame rule
). It's standard practice that when a person in a position of authority is personally involved in a conflict, they should excuse themselves from the judgement process and have an independent person deal with it. We will be raising this issue with admin and encouraging them to ensure that all moderators who may not exhibit this level of professionalism be appropriately "educated" to avoid future problems.We would like to point out that the admin team has acted politely and professionally. A quicker response would have been good, but we certainly understand that it takes time to investigate what has gone on and talk to those involved, especially with the timezone differences in place. We have no complaint or issue with them and are grateful that they have chosen to overturn our ban.
Having looked a little more at the Canadian site (no, we haven't created an account there - just poked around as the general public can), we can say that some of our concerns around image security have been improved. The open access to forum posts and profile text is still a worry, but image thumbnails no longer appear in profiles and that fixes (or at least hides) a whole bunch of other problems. The site still looks like it was put together by a high school student :razz: but that's a different matter. We'll give it a more thorough look over when it finally hits our shores.
Anyway, all's well that ends well and if nothing else it has been a very interesting few days. :lol:
And if you've gone and read through this entire essay... jeez guys, get a life! Surely there must be more interesting things out there than us. :grin:
marynray
