Social Network Security Manager

Social Network Security Manager

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.

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Last Answer on December 02, 2013

Best Rated

What’s to stop someone from uploading hardcore porn to their social network profile?

Asked by crayonz over 12 years ago

Nothing! Bwuahaha! OK Well there are repercussions - the account would be deleted for violating the Terms of Service. It's just not a good idea in general. Keep porn where porn belongs, which is not on a social network that has underage people and a strict Terms of Service that needs to be abided by. Just like how one shouldn't wander down the street naked or have sex in public places, it's the same with porn - society and law dictates that sexual acts are not for public arenas.

Are there unicycles, foosball tables, and ball pits at work, or are your offices as corporate and stuffy as any other big company?

Asked by ELLIE about 12 years ago

Yes, at just about every company I work at there seems to always be foosball tables. I wish there was a ball pit at my current or any previous employers, that would be rad. I can't work at any big, corporate stuffy company. I worked for Siebel for a few months over a decade ago and found that out the hard way. :)

Do you remember Bebo? Were you working at a social network when it was sold for $850M, and what were insiders saying about it at the time?

Asked by katbo about 12 years ago

BEBO!!! Blast from the past! If I recall, I always considered that a social network for 'young kids' (or people from another country). Do you mean $580MM? In that case, maybe. ;) Or please let me know which one sold for $850, I'm trying to jog my memory and can't recall who was in that range at the time.

If you identify a hacker or spammer and block him, what's to stop him from just creating another account? And another, and another, and another...

Asked by Zucktown about 12 years ago

Hey Zucktown, Good question. Generally spammers are automated systems that are coming in from a certain IP address/block of IP addresses (*cough* China *cough*) or mass posting very similar types of content. Based on various factors, you can either prevent account creation and/or certain types of content being posted. If an individual hacker is targeting a very specific individual, that is a bit tougher. We try to educate users on account security - so be wary of phishing, don't have a password of 'Password' (this happens more than you know) or name your password after your cat (a friend of mine got his account 'hacked' by his ex-girlfriend. Turns out his password was his cat's name. #fail).

Was your team monitoring the site 24/7? Were there certain days/times where violations were more frequent?

Asked by Gresh over 12 years ago

Good question, Gresh. There were both people and systems that would monitor for certain activities on the site (such as a spam attack) that were 24/7 (staffing for the graveyard shift is tough!). In the early days before I had the team become 24/7, the spammers knew when we went off line and would start their attack in the later evening and on weekends. Standard TOS violations would spike with site traffic, which tended to be 'after work' hours, so you would see the rise when the East coast got out of work/school and continue over to the West coast. Granted, our site was international but the majority of the traffic was domestic.

Do you think Facebook will still be around in 5 years? 10 years?

Asked by tubes over 12 years ago

Yes to both! I've been a very active user of the interw3b since about 1995 and there are pre-cursor 'social network' sites that still have a strong fan base (such as Livejournal) (OK I admit, I still love Livejournal) and have easily lasted over a decade. Will Facebook still have the strong following it does now? Only time will tell, but it's hard to stay on top forever!

Did you proactively search for and report people whose profiles suggested they were breaking the law? Like: if someone posts a picture of themself snorting coke?

Asked by justin over 12 years ago

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.