Cloudflare—Cloudflare forwarded abuse complainants' personal information to hate sites, enabling harassment
ProPublica reported in 2019 that Cloudflare's abuse reporting system forwarded the names and email addresses of people who complained about hate site content directly to the hate sites in question. This enabled campaigns of harassment against those filing complaints. After ProPublica's investigation, Cloudflare said it would change its abuse reporting system to allow safer complaint submission.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Safety for Vulnerable Users | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| User Privacy | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.214 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.57)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
ProPublica investigation revealed Cloudflare forwarded complainant personal data to hate sites
ProPublica reported that Cloudflare's abuse reporting system forwarded the names and email addresses of people who complained about hate site content directly to those hate sites. This enabled campaigns of harassment against the complainants. After the investigation, Cloudflare committed to changing its abuse reporting system.