Neighborhood Watch
If you grew up in suburbia, you probably saw those neighborhood watch signs around, or you probably at least saw or heard about neighborhood watches on TV. The idea is simple: People watching out for their neighbors. Sure police are nice to have, but when they cant be there, its always nice to know that your neighbor has your back and is watching out for you.
In a recent email we sent out, we notified our users of a recent abuse within VirtualOffice. A very nice teacher reported that a couple of websites were created with inappropriate material, in violation of our service agreement. We basically had two options. 1) Cancel the accounts and hope it doesn't happen again, or 2) cancel the accounts and take immediate action. We chose option 2.
Our users mean a lot to us. Heck, without them, there is no E-Office Hours! We are always delighted to get feedback from our users (good or bad) and we continue to endorse a policy of honesty when it comes to communication. This is why we decided to let our users know a week in advance of the steps we would be taking to lock down and secure E-Office Hours.
After some pretty lengthy debates and several good ideas, we decided that a neighborhood watch was the best option for securing E-Office Hours and preventing unwanted people from signing up. The idea is that from now on, whenever a new user signs up, we will notify everyone at their school using VirtualOffice. We then allow all users at their school to verify that they know the new user. If they are verified, great! If not, we at E-Office Hours are notified and perform an independent verification on that new user. I can't disclose what that process is for security reasons, but its pretty extensive. A new user can still set up their website and build the classes, but they just cant be added to their school officially until they are verified. This essentially means that students cant find the new user's course websites using our website.
This new neighborhood watch system achieves 2 goals:
If you grew up in suburbia, you probably saw those neighborhood watch signs around, or you probably at least saw or heard about neighborhood watches on TV. The idea is simple: People watching out for their neighbors. Sure police are nice to have, but when they cant be there, its always nice to know that your neighbor has your back and is watching out for you.
In a recent email we sent out, we notified our users of a recent abuse within VirtualOffice. A very nice teacher reported that a couple of websites were created with inappropriate material, in violation of our service agreement. We basically had two options. 1) Cancel the accounts and hope it doesn't happen again, or 2) cancel the accounts and take immediate action. We chose option 2.
Our users mean a lot to us. Heck, without them, there is no E-Office Hours! We are always delighted to get feedback from our users (good or bad) and we continue to endorse a policy of honesty when it comes to communication. This is why we decided to let our users know a week in advance of the steps we would be taking to lock down and secure E-Office Hours.
After some pretty lengthy debates and several good ideas, we decided that a neighborhood watch was the best option for securing E-Office Hours and preventing unwanted people from signing up. The idea is that from now on, whenever a new user signs up, we will notify everyone at their school using VirtualOffice. We then allow all users at their school to verify that they know the new user. If they are verified, great! If not, we at E-Office Hours are notified and perform an independent verification on that new user. I can't disclose what that process is for security reasons, but its pretty extensive. A new user can still set up their website and build the classes, but they just cant be added to their school officially until they are verified. This essentially means that students cant find the new user's course websites using our website.
This new neighborhood watch system achieves 2 goals:
- Our software and its users (teachers, students, parents) are further protected and safe.
- Our users are not hindered and stopped from performing their work, or otherwise severely restricted from using VirtualOffice.
During the week we allotted for user feedback, we had a lot of positive emails, giving us overwhelming support for our new security measures. Some teachers even volunteered to verify colleagues in the district as well as their school!!! So now that its out the door, the E-Office Hours community can rest assured that everyone is watching out for them, and that they are safe. Its a good feeling, isn't it?
Cheers, Dan
posted by Dan at
11:57 PM
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