TOPIC:

A valued member was listed in the FreeToasthost ""Crowd-Sourced" Email Black List under Email & Contact Forms likely by another club. How do our club officers or s/he remove this email address from this blacklist? We've added the valued member's email address to our white list in case it overrides the blacklist.

Virtual Parliamentarians (#7850496)

1) if we don't know whom you are talking about we cannot answer your qiestion.

2) White list overrides for your club only.

Thanks for the helpful update. White list works for our club. The valued member would like to protect his/her privacy due to past experience. How can s/he message his/her contact info privately somehow for your team to troubleshoot removing him/her from the blacklist?

We do not remove anyone from the black list, if another club put them there they will stay there until the club removes them. And no we will not tell you which club blacklisted them, your member will have to figure that out as your member knows who they have emailed in the past.

Thanks for the clarification. However, I've witnessed some clubs abuse admin privileges due to bias, conflicts of interest, etc. Thus, it seems unfair that innocent members could be blacklisted from all Toastmasters clubs due to an admin abusing this authority for his/her club.

I also understand the value of transparency. However, some valued members have had their identities stolen, abused, etc. Based on what the Pathways project on Building a Social Media Presence teaches us on privacy, we should not be revealing names, email addresses, and other info for web crawlers, hackers, etc. Thus, there should be some way for these valued members to communicate on sensitive or complex matters without revealing their contact info for your team to troubleshoot the black list issues accordingly.

It also seems that clubs should only be able to white and black list members for their club. Likewise, if FTH gives an abusive admin the right to black list an innocent member from all clubs, there should be a system of checks and balances for victims to report the club and/or admin for preventing this from recurring for more innocent members and potentially removing themselves from black lists to communicate with fellow Toastmasters as a valued members by others in the club (regardless of an admin's preferences and power).

Then, FTH may have more of a balanced, holistic perspective for deciding whether the email address in question belongs in the "Crowd-Sourced" Email Black List or the admin is abusing their authority. Moreover, it makes sense if FreeToastHost (FTH) witnesses bad behavior across multiple clubs to add these email addresses to the Crowd-Sourced Email Black List. Unlike FTH, clubs don't have access to this data to warrant having this privilege act beyond their club except to report these individuals for FTH to decide and update this "Crowd-Sourced" email black list.

The admins are not usually the ones who black list email addresses. It is the members receiving email they consider to be spam and click the 'Is this spam' link at the bottom of the email.

Your member obviously sent an email that the recipient considered as spam. Your member will have to contact that person and have them remove the spam designation from that clubs black list.

FTH will not override.

Ok, I am going to chime in here. I conceived of and implemented the "Crowd-Sourced" Blacklist (CS Blacklist) feature a few years ago to allow clubs, especially those just starting out w/ FTH, to benefit from what other clubs had learned about spammers. (and they blacklisted them)

This is an *optional* feature that clubs are not required to use (they can shut it off) and I have worked to evolve it into its present form over the past few years after a lot of thought and experience with it. When the feature is in use by a club, the system makes no distinction about spammer email addresses that were blacklisted by other clubs or your club. The system does not check whether the email address belongs to a club member of your club--that is on purpose given my review of potential contentious usage scenarios. You can use your club whitelist to give the member the ability to use the offending email address with your club, but they will still be blocked from sending email using that email address to other clubs that use the CS Blacklist.

We do not maintain the CS Blacklist, per se, and we have no means of "updating" it short of contacting a particular club about modifying their club blacklist, which will will not do. (It is their choice to blacklist whatever email addresses they deem appropriate.) The Blacklist is self-generated on the fly from the blacklists of other clubs that use FTH--this is why we cannot "update" it. Email addresses on the CS Blacklist are not blocked from *all* clubs using FTH (only those using the CS Blacklist)--however, as many clubs using FTH do use the CS Blacklist, it is true that having an email address show up on it can severely limit the ability to use that particular email address with the system when emailing other clubs.

Members need to be very careful when using the system to contact other clubs. What they deem as a perfectly harmless email may not be viewed the same way by other clubs.

You are always welcome to send us private information via private message in response to a forum message inquiry.

Your member can always just go and get another email address (e.g. Gmail) since that email address would not be on the CS Blacklist. Bottom line... this is why I will not change the current feature implementation.

Oh, thanks for the helpful context. I agree with you that if a member marks an email as spam, then it should be flagged as spam in the black list.

However, there are some admins and members who abuse this against those they don't like for personal, not professional, reasons. Thus, there seems to be a gap in the process where tools should enhance systems, not be exploited.

According to the Toastmasters governing docs, a member can restore or defend themselves with a disciplinary hearing as per Policy 3.0: Ethics & ConductPolicy 3.0: Ethics & Conduct . However, if there is no recourse for the innocent victim to defend themselves for FreeToastHost (FTH) to respond accordingly, then this feature can perpetuate Section 3: Harassment & Bullying - Section A, I with "persistent singling out of individuals".

If you're willing to explore how to bridge this gap, perhaps the FTH team and this valued member of multiple clubs and winner of various service awards in districts can pilot the solution. Several district and club leaders can vouch for this valued member and others like him/her.

Understanding comes through communication, and through communication we find the way to peace. - Dr. Ralph Smedley

Again, thanks for the helpful context and history of how this good feature evolved and may have been exploited by some. I'll let the valued member know of your two helpful suggestions for replying privately and creating another email address.

I truly appreciate what the FTH team has done and how responsive you all are for the benefit of the community!