The Rayaan / Jacob(smooth) Situation
January 7, 2014 at 8:56 pm
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2014 at 2:28 am by Tiberius.)
As some of you will be aware from this thread, we were recently made aware of a violation of our privacy policy by one of our admins, Rayaan, involving the personal information of one of our members, Jacob(smooth) referred to as 'Jacob' from now on. Please note that this post will be very long, there is a lot of information to get through, and I feel we must include it all in order to properly deal with the issues.
From our internal investigation and conversations, we have determined that the course of events was as follows:
Whilst Rayaan may have initially thought he had good reason to look up Jacob on other forums, he (1) used information that was entrusted to atheistforums.org in a way which was not covered by our privacy policy. He then (2) revealed to a user that he knew who they were. He also (3) then made it appear to this member (and everyone else in the thread) that this was a personal thing and not at all related to the running of the forum. Finally, he (4) didn't inform the staff of his initial suspicions, or that he was doing an investigation at any point.
It was further agreed that Rayaan was not purposefully violating our privacy policy, but that the violation occurred because staff had not had the policy properly explained to them when it was put into action.
Nevertheless, the staff asked Rayaan to apologise, and he did via PM to Jacob on 29th December 2013. This apology was not previewed by staff before it was sent, and it was unnecessarily wordy and came across as excuses rather than an actual apology. The PM conversation that followed between Rayaan and Jacob (some of which was posted on the forums by Jacob) did not go well either, and Rayaan made several statements that were not worded very well, and as such were misinterpreted by Jacob. Rayaan also quoted staff members to back up his position, despite the fact that these quotes were made when not all facts had been revealed.
The culmination of this PM conversation was Jacob's post on 30th December 2013 wherein he stated he was leaving the forum.
LastPoet posted a reply to Jacob's leaving post, saying he was "whining" and that "[Jacob] never fooled me.". These statements were not the opinions of the staff and were regretted by LastPoet (who apologized later in the thread). Before the apology however, the statements caused an understandable level of outrage and new accusations of abuses.
However, some of the outrage did go too far, and it is the opinion of the staff that any comparison to the "NSA" or "Edward Snowden" are ridiculous and highly exaggerated. This was a case of a single privacy violation. We do not spy on our members. We do not tap their internet connections, mobile phones, and we do not intercept their emails, etc. To suggest that Rayaan's violation is even remotely comparable to the NSA spying in the US is out of order and only serve to distract from the main issues.
There was a legitimate concern about financial records that we hold, and whether Rayaan has access to them. I can state absolutely that he does not. If you have ever donated to the forum, either via the PayPal button or to me directly, then the money went directly into my own personal (and private) PayPal account. The emails sent to confirm the transaction were sent to my personal email address. The only staff member to have access to any financial information involved in these transactions is myself.
I apologize if there were other concerns that have been missed; I have had to read over two threads (the public one and the staff one) multiple times just to write this post, and it is likely that some did not get properly covered. If there are specific things that people wish me to comment on, I will of course answer them in this thread and update this post.
Resolution
The final decision of the staff, based on the investigation of Rayaan's actions, is that Jacob deserves a full apology not just from Rayaan but from the entire staff team. I am personally appalled at some of the attitudes the staff have had in dealing with what should have been an open and shut case. This was not just a failing on Rayaan's part, but a failing by myself to properly educate the staff on what the new privacy policy meant in terms of user data and what we can do with it. This failing will be rectified within the next few weeks, and I will endeavor to write proper instructions for current and any new mods on how the privacy policy works and what counts as a violation of it. We cannot promise that violations will never occur, but we can at least deal with them in a much harsher way in future.
I am aware that a number of you have called for Rayaan's removal or resignation from staff. Whether Rayaan wants to resign is entirely up to him, but we will not be asking him to step down. This is for two main reasons:
1) He is a fantastic administrator with a (until now) clean record of conduct, and he is also well respected by the majority of the community here. His removal would be a loss to the team and to the forums.
2) Whilst he did violate the privacy policy, he did so unknowingly.
Not everyone will agree with our decision, but we hope that most of you will at least understand it. Rayaan's removal from staff would do us no favors and would be a great loss to the community.
From our internal investigation and conversations, we have determined that the course of events was as follows:
- Shortly after Jacob had joined the forums (13th November 2013), Rayaan suspected him of being a poe (effectively, a person who claims to be a Christian but is in fact trying to trick people).
- Using information that was posted publicly by Jacob (his username, profile content, and information in his posts), Rayaan used Google to try to find him on other forums and see if these profiles matched up.
- After Jacob revealed his profession (podiatrist) in this post, Rayaan used his ability as an admin to access Jacob's email address (which all members give us when they register), and from this email address he was able to extract Jacob's full name. Using Jacob's full name with his profession in a Google search revealed a number of Jacob's accounts, including one on a forum in which he had publicly posted a photo of himself and his family.
- Satisfied that Jacob was not a poe as he had previously suspected, Rayaan stopped searching.
- On 27th December, Rayaan mentioned to Jacob in this thread (a split from the original) that:
Quote:I read some of your stuff in a podiatrist forum. I know who you are.
Skillz
- Jacob, evidently expecting to have been "found" based on post style alone, responded:
Quote:If you recognise the style I'll be impressed. Go, on, pm me who you think I is and I'll tell you if you're right.
Wait, What The he'll were you doing on a podiatrist forum!?
- Rayaan sent Jacob a PM that included Jacob's real name, a link to the aforementioned public photo of his family which was posted on another forum, the name of another forum in which Jacob had an account, and the name of Jacob's YouTube channel. In response to Jacob's query over what Rayaan was doing on a podiatrist forum, Rayaan responded:
Quote:Just stalking your posts.
- Knowing that the information Rayaan had obtained was accurate, Jacob asked:
Quote:Ok, you're a scary person! Why the hell were you stalking me?!
- To which Rayaan responded:
Quote:Stalking is what I do when I'm bored.
Plus, I'm an admin, so occasionally I like to put on my detective hat when I want to know more about certain members.
- At this point, Jacob deduced what Rayaan had done to find his other accounts online, made this clear in the thread, and after a number of complaints in the thread, made an official complaint to myself via a PM. I asked Jacob to report the post in question so that the matter could be looked into by all staff members, which he did. He also forwarded me a copy of the PM that Rayaan had sent him. At the same time and completely separately, staff member Cthulhu Dreaming also reported the post.
- After some posts back and forth between Rayaan and Jacob in the thread, I asked if all parties involved would refrain from posting so that the staff could handle the issue properly.
Whilst Rayaan may have initially thought he had good reason to look up Jacob on other forums, he (1) used information that was entrusted to atheistforums.org in a way which was not covered by our privacy policy. He then (2) revealed to a user that he knew who they were. He also (3) then made it appear to this member (and everyone else in the thread) that this was a personal thing and not at all related to the running of the forum. Finally, he (4) didn't inform the staff of his initial suspicions, or that he was doing an investigation at any point.
It was further agreed that Rayaan was not purposefully violating our privacy policy, but that the violation occurred because staff had not had the policy properly explained to them when it was put into action.
Nevertheless, the staff asked Rayaan to apologise, and he did via PM to Jacob on 29th December 2013. This apology was not previewed by staff before it was sent, and it was unnecessarily wordy and came across as excuses rather than an actual apology. The PM conversation that followed between Rayaan and Jacob (some of which was posted on the forums by Jacob) did not go well either, and Rayaan made several statements that were not worded very well, and as such were misinterpreted by Jacob. Rayaan also quoted staff members to back up his position, despite the fact that these quotes were made when not all facts had been revealed.
The culmination of this PM conversation was Jacob's post on 30th December 2013 wherein he stated he was leaving the forum.
LastPoet posted a reply to Jacob's leaving post, saying he was "whining" and that "[Jacob] never fooled me.". These statements were not the opinions of the staff and were regretted by LastPoet (who apologized later in the thread). Before the apology however, the statements caused an understandable level of outrage and new accusations of abuses.
However, some of the outrage did go too far, and it is the opinion of the staff that any comparison to the "NSA" or "Edward Snowden" are ridiculous and highly exaggerated. This was a case of a single privacy violation. We do not spy on our members. We do not tap their internet connections, mobile phones, and we do not intercept their emails, etc. To suggest that Rayaan's violation is even remotely comparable to the NSA spying in the US is out of order and only serve to distract from the main issues.
There was a legitimate concern about financial records that we hold, and whether Rayaan has access to them. I can state absolutely that he does not. If you have ever donated to the forum, either via the PayPal button or to me directly, then the money went directly into my own personal (and private) PayPal account. The emails sent to confirm the transaction were sent to my personal email address. The only staff member to have access to any financial information involved in these transactions is myself.
I apologize if there were other concerns that have been missed; I have had to read over two threads (the public one and the staff one) multiple times just to write this post, and it is likely that some did not get properly covered. If there are specific things that people wish me to comment on, I will of course answer them in this thread and update this post.
Resolution
The final decision of the staff, based on the investigation of Rayaan's actions, is that Jacob deserves a full apology not just from Rayaan but from the entire staff team. I am personally appalled at some of the attitudes the staff have had in dealing with what should have been an open and shut case. This was not just a failing on Rayaan's part, but a failing by myself to properly educate the staff on what the new privacy policy meant in terms of user data and what we can do with it. This failing will be rectified within the next few weeks, and I will endeavor to write proper instructions for current and any new mods on how the privacy policy works and what counts as a violation of it. We cannot promise that violations will never occur, but we can at least deal with them in a much harsher way in future.
I am aware that a number of you have called for Rayaan's removal or resignation from staff. Whether Rayaan wants to resign is entirely up to him, but we will not be asking him to step down. This is for two main reasons:
1) He is a fantastic administrator with a (until now) clean record of conduct, and he is also well respected by the majority of the community here. His removal would be a loss to the team and to the forums.
2) Whilst he did violate the privacy policy, he did so unknowingly.
Not everyone will agree with our decision, but we hope that most of you will at least understand it. Rayaan's removal from staff would do us no favors and would be a great loss to the community.
