Thanks for a great year

Happy New Year!

I want to take a moment to tell all of our members how much I appreciate you trying Nation of Neighbors. I know there are literally thousands of great web-based projects out there vying for your attention. Thanks very much for giving ours a chance. I hope that you have found Nation of Neighbors useful.

2009 was a wonderful year. We launched Nation of Neighbors in June and we’ve had a great response. We’ve made a lot of new friends, received some great feedback, made improvements, learned a lot and, hopefully, somewhere someone is a little safer.

Despite the great year we’ve just had, I’m really excited about 2010. We’re currently involved in several grant opportunities and exploring other funding options. We’ll be launching several new exciting features this month including the ability to reply to reports and other local news simply by replying to the notification email, discussion groups and Twitter integration. And on a more personal note, I’m also laid off from my full-time job as of today. While it’s stressful, I’m using it as an opportunity to devote more time and energy to Nation of Neighbors. As of today, this is my full time job. I’m looking forward to working with you.

Nation of Neighbors on Crime Prevention 101 With Susan Bartelstone

Upcoming Radio Show – Crime Victims Who Survived and Triumphed (Part 1)

Interviews with:

* Art Hanson, Nation of Neighbors (www.nationofneighbors.com)
* Vicki Polin, The Awareness Center, International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse and Assault (www.theawarenesscenter.org)
* Polly Franks, the Franks Foundation (www.franksfoundation.org)
* Lavoyed Hudgins, Public Service Employees Association (www.psea.com)

********************************

*Air Date: December 24, 2009 @8pm eastern*
Also Available On Demand @ VoiceAmerica.com
http://tinyurl.com/PreventCrime

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: SUSAN BARTELSTONE, 718-225-9284

Crime Victims who’ve overcome and thrived
and are now helping others do the same.

NEW YORK-December 21, 2009: It’s hard to think about crime and violence during this month of peace and renewal; but hang in there with me because I’m going to introduce you to four courageous people who want to tell you their stories. These are people who’ve been victims of terrible crimes, like home invasion, sexual assault, the abuse of a child or the murder of a parent, but went on to heal and are now helping others do the same.

So get comfortable in your chair, grab something warm to drink, and stick with me for a while.

First up, you’ll hear from Art Hanson, who, after having his home burglarized, started a neighborhood watch program and develop ed online tools to help communities fight crime — which he gives away for free.

Next, meet Vicki Polin, a child abuse and sexual assault survivor. As a result, she became a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor specializing in sexual trauma and has been helping others for more than 25 years. She founded The Awareness Center of the International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse; Assault, which helps Jewish survivors of sexual violence and those who support them.

Then I’ve got Polly Franks, the mother of two daughters who were molested by a neighbor. She became a private investigator for the sole purpose of bringing him to justice — and he’s now serving life. And, she did it all while wheelchair bound. She founded the Franks Foundation to help victims of childhood sexual abuse.

And last, you’ll hear from Lavoyed Hudgins who became a caring police officer after witnessing the murder of this father during a botched robbery. Instead of being bitter, he’s tried to help kids in trouble before they became killers.

Let my guests inspire you like they’ve inspired me on this special, special night.

The Case for Public Intelligence

We’ve run into several cases lately where, after information posted on Nation of Neighbors was sent to Law Enforcement, we received a reply similar to: “Thanks! but why didn’t you just call instead of posting it online?”

That response really surprised me. I’ve been focused on sharing this sort of information for so long, it’s been a while since I last paused to wonder why I think this is a good idea. Is it a good idea? Here’s my case for public intelligence – immediately sharing information that law enforcement might otherwise not.

Punishment vs. Prevention

There are many reasons why crime or suspicious activity might be kept private. One of the most frequently cited is that releasing information ‘might interfere with an ongoing investigation’. Releasing information out into the public might alert the suspect that they’re being watched and cause the suspect to somehow modify their behavior, reducing the chance that they can be successfully apprehended and prosecuted. From the law enforcement side, this is a good thing. After all, public opinion judges them on arrests – not prevention. Someone sees something suspicious, calls their local non emergency number and reports the incident to law enforcement, who take it from there. The problem is, that unless the suspect has actually committed a crime and is immediately apprehended, there’s no real benefit to the local community. Even in cases where the incident shows up on a public crime map several days or weeks later, the opportune moment for public knowledge of the incident has often passed.

Why make these incidents public immediately? If the incident you’re thinking of reporting affected you, chances are it could affect your neighbors as well. If a scammer knocked on your door, he’s going to knock on other doors in your neighborhood. The woman driving by slowly who may be casing homes isn’t only interested in yours. If you were a victim of a crime, there’s a good chance that someone in the neighborhood knows something that can help catch the perpetrator – or prevent someone else from becoming a victim. While there is a chance that the perpetrator will find out that there was a report made by some anonymous person, it will generally cause them to move on to some other neighborhood where people aren’t watching. Anyone remember the exterminator commercials where the homeowners solved their cockroach problem by turning up the lights to the point where they had to wear sunglasses indoors? Criminals work like that too.

Many of the incidents reported online would never have been reported to law enforcement. Calling your local police takes a much higher threshold of concern than reporting something confidentially online. Unfortunately, many callers are left wondering whether their call was appreciated or valued. There’s also the fear of retaliation – not knowing if their name will be given to the suspect – and the lack of followup. Did they act on the information? Should you be concerned? Were you blowing it out of proportion?

Getting immediate community feedback is invaluable – for both law enforcement and citizens.

Apologies to New Hyde Park, NY

To our new members from New Hyde Park, NY

I apologize for the broken link to your group.  Unfortunately our system neglected to remove the ‘/’ from the link to your group when it was created, breaking the link.  I’ve fixed it and made modifications so that this does not happen again.

The correct link to your group is:
http://www.nationofneighbors.com/community/NY/herricks-new-hyde-park

Profile Photos Fixed

Profile photos are working again.  If you’ve had trouble changing your community photo or personal profile photo recently, it should work for you now.

Oops

One step forward…

When I updated the community maps yesterday I accidentally broke profile photos.  I’m working on it now.  In the meantime, member profile photos and community profile photos may not upload correctly.  Thanks for your patience.

No More Referral Codes

I completely did away with ‘referral codes’ this morning.

When we launched Nation of Neighbors back in June we wanted to ensure that we didn’t have spammers signing up and sending out reports with our broadcast system.  While they never succeeded sending out a spam report on our previous site (Watch Jefferson County), that was only because we were hyper vigilant and limited to a small geographic area.  They tried all the time.  Ron literally had a full time volunteer job deleting spam.  Based on that experience, we built a number of spam control measures into Nation of Neighbors.  One of those controls was the ‘referral code’ system.

Here’s how it worked:  Rather than allowing prospective members to join immediately, prospective members instead requested a referral.  If the prospective member lived within the boundaries of an existing group, the request was shown to existing members who could choose to send the prospective member an invitation.  When the prospective member lived in a new area, the invitation was issued by an admin.  This barrier to entry was supposed to limit ‘false’ registrations and help community leaders control who got to see and share information in their community (you can still elect to approve all group members in your group’s settings).  After all, you know who really lives in your community.  We don’t.  In reality, our existing communities were already pretty well covered, so Ron and I ended up sending most of the invitations anyway.

Two months ago I changed our system over to ’self-invitation’.  You entered your phone number or email address and received a code that you entered on the signup form.  I believe that’s still excessive and redundant – 50% of the potential members who requested a referral never returned to sign up.  Many of those potential members lived within existing community groups.

Why did we ever require referral codes?  In my own words:

This small barrier to entry helps us maintain high quality membership and data.  The referral system also helps us avoid ‘members’ who would sign up to post spam.  The referral system also helps ensure that we can limit growth to a manageable level and focus on growth at the local level when new community groups are added.

Spam has not been a problem (we currently have 10 times more traffic than Watch Jefferson did without a single spam message to delete) and we have had no problem controlling traffic or ‘growth’. In fact, I wish we had that problem. I should have known better.

To everyone who took the time to fill out the extra forms – please accept my apologies.  If there are other barriers to participation that we should know about, please let us know!

Strength in Communication

We’ve gone through a number of number of ‘catchphrases’ over the past few years.   Online Neighborhood Watch, Neighborhood Watch 2.0, Real-Time Community Networking…

I’ve always struggled with boiling down the idea behind Nation of Neighbors (formerly Watch Jefferson) into a single, succinct sentence.  Sure it’s about Neighborhood Watch.  However, as anyone who’s been part of a successful watch group knows, the real benefits extend far beyond reducing crime.  The real benefit is often an improved sense of community because you get to know your neighbors.  That’s also  the idea behind Nation of Neighbors.

I struggled with this again this morning when I created a short 20 second video in response to a request for videos to support News Challenge grant applications. I ended up describing Nation of Neighbors in under 20 seconds (and anyone who knows me knows that’s a big deal…) by skipping technology and talking about neighbors getting to know each other.  Which brings me back to my original point – my favorite catchphrase.

Strength in Communication

My most vivid memory of learning something in grade school is from the second or third grade.  I attended a small Amish school at the time.  One day a man visited our class carrying a small bundle of sticks.  He asked us, a class of approximately 25 students between first and eighth grade, who could break the bundle of sticks.  I think we all tried.  Finally, an older boy had the idea to untie the bundle and began breaking the sticks one by one.  The basic lesson, of course, is that there is strength in numbers.  Or that in order to solve a big problem, it can be helpful to break it up into a series of smaller problems.  For some reason, that small demonstration had a profound effect on me and I have never forgotten it.  I also apply this lesson to how I think about communities and my aspirations for Nation of Neighbors.  As we become more and more entangled in the virtual modern world we have created we become less and less involved in the actual communities where we live.  Most of us don’t know our neighbors very well, if we’ve ever met them at all.  As that social fabric unravels, each individual member of the community becomes more susceptible to failure.  To reverse this process, we need to reconnect the individuals – to get them communicating.  Whether you do that on your front porch, over the back fence, on Facebook or Nation of Neighbors, it will be a good thing and it will make your community stronger and a better place to live.  Communication is vital to our success as humans, whether it’s a pack of hunters, your marriage, government or your community.  My hope for Nation of Neighbors is that we can help you have that conversation with your Neighbors – even if it’s about something difficult and sensitive like crime or other community problems.  That technology and innovation, while perhaps responsible for the unraveling of our communities, can also be our salvation.

Ensuring that reports are legitimate

The following question was posted on our News Challenge application page.  My answer is too long to fit in the comment section there, so I’m posting it on our blog instead.

Marsha said:

This seems like a great concept. I’m just curious how you ensure that the reports of suspicious activity are”legitimate”? I hope this gets funded so that my community can sign up to use it.

Thanks Marsha!  That’s a great question.  It not only affects Nation of Neighbors, but many other attempts at ‘community’ networking, including several of the other proposed projects on the News Challenge website.  There are several kinds of illegitimate reports we need to guard against.

The first, and easiest to identify and avoid, is spam.  We relay reports to members in real time via both email and SMS – our report form is publicly available on the internet worldwide.  We use multiple public and private blacklists, content filters and our report moderation scheme (reports from first time reporters must be reviewed by a report moderator prior to broadcast) to avoid spam.

False reports are more challenging.  We have a filtering algorithm that assigns each incoming report a ‘trust’ index.  We’ve developed this index based on reports – both true and untrue – that we’ve received over the past few years.  The score is generated based on the content of the report and the users IP address as well as any history the user may have with Nation of Neighbors. This index is shown to the reviewer (for moderated reports) and a low score will push an otherwise unmoderated report into the moderation queue.  There’s also the benefit that reports are only sent out locally.  False reports are usually relatively easily identified by people actually living in the community and could be removed and the reporter blocked (by IP address) from making further reports.

Unallowed reports also represent a challenge.  These are reports that, while possibly truthful, do not fit within the parameters of our mission or the intended purpose of our report system.  This category includes things like “my neighbor is a jerk and never cuts his grass” or  “my neighbor gave me the finger”.  In the case that an established member (whose reports are broadcast immediately) would publish a report like this, they would likely lose their unmoderated reporting status – but that decision would be up to the local community admin – not us.

There’s also the occasional report that never goes public because of privacy concerns or because it might interfere with an investigation.  These reports are sent to the appropriate authorities but not published immediately.

Of course, we currently have the advantage of relative obscurity.  As our networks expand our report system will become a bigger target and we’ll have to further develop and refine our methods.  This is one of the reasons we’re applying to the Knight Foundation for funding.

IRS Alert – Notice of Underreported Income

I checked my email this morning before I had my first cup of coffee.  That’s always a mistake and this morning was no exception.  The first thing I noticed in my inbox was an email from the IRS with the subject “Notice of Underreported Income”.  I did what any honest, law-abiding, tax paying citizen would do – my heart skipped a beat and I panicked.  I opened the email and, after the longest few seconds ever, realized that it was a phishing scam.  While phishing is not new – anyone with an email account probably gets several a day – this one is particularly insidious.  Most phishing email comes from ‘institutions’ you do not actually do business with.  Just yesterday, the First Second and Third National Bank of Who Knows Where asked me to ‘Please to Update Nice Customer Data Form’.  I didn’t give it a second thought because I don’t have an account there.  Everyone has an account with the IRS.  What’s more, the whole tax paying process is so complex that we all harbor a fear of having done something wrong.  Fortunately, despite the lack of coffee, common sense overcame my panic quickly.  The IRS does not contact taxpayers via email, there are numerous spelling and grammar mistakes and the link goes to www.irs.gov.yhhsszz.net (the important part is the yhhsszz.net).  If I had clicked the link the site would have tried to get me to install some malicious software on my computer.

The moral here is that no respectable institution you have any business doing business with will send you an email asking you to click a link and fill out a form divulging financial information online.  Here are three common sense rules to follow to detect phishing:

• Does the link actually go where it says it’s going to go? Hover over the link with your mouse and look at the link location in your browser’s (or Outlook’s) status bar.  If it says it’s from Ebay but the link points to webapp.ebay.badsite.com it’s not really from Ebay.  The only part of the URL that’s important for this test is what’s to the immediate left and right of the last ‘.’ – anyone can put ‘ebay’ or ‘bankofamerica’ or ‘irs.gov’ in front of their actual domain name.
• Are there spelling / grammar mistakes? Any legitimate business email will use proper spelling and grammar.  Fortunately, this is something the phishers just can’t seem to manage.
• Is the email from someone you do business with, and do they have reason to contact you via email? Ebay will legitimately send you an email invoice asking you to pay for a purchase.  Amazon may need you to update your expired credit card.  However, your bank will never ask you to fill out an online form giving them your social security number and credit card information.

Better safe than sorry. If you get a seemingly legitimate email from Ebay, Amazon, Paypal or anyone else you do business with who has a legitimate reason to request that you pay for something or update your information online, you initiate the transaction by typing their address into the address bar of your browser.  Don’t just click the link in the email, type in ‘www.ebay.com’, then go to your my ebay page.  When your entering your credit card information online (or anything else for that matter) always make sure the URL in your browser’s address bar is what you would expect it to be (ebay.com, not ebay.someothersite.xxyyz.com) and that the URL starts with ‘https‘ – especially if you’re entering financial information.

Notice of Underreported Income - phishing scam