MARCH 10, 2011
Anti-cyberbullying site shut down after threatening host with bad review
PORTLAND, Ore. – A new service built to provide a global countermeasure to deter cyberbullying was shut down before it could ever get off the ground due to a dispute with Cyber Cast International (CCI). The dispute began when CCI refused to provide the owner of CyberbullyingReport.com with basic services, escalated when George O’Brien threatened to publish a negative review of their business if services were not provided, and ended when CCI suspended O’Brien’s account for alleged misconduct.
Cyberbullying Report Anti-Bullying and Internet Safety Services is an anonymous publishing service similar in nature to RipOffReport.com designed to empower victims of internet harassment to call out their tormentors online using a highly search engine visible format. The service went online in November, but its official launch was delayed for the purpose of adding a global geographic listing feature and other improvements. The new site was complete, tested, and ready for launch late last week with a technical error on the CCI server holding it back.
The cause of the technical error is still unknown, but the effect made it impossible for O’Brien to use his Web.Config file to set the session timeout of his ASP.Net web application beyond the default setting of 20 minutes making it impossible for users to login to their account and write a report in less than 20 minutes without being logged out automatically. O’Brien filed a support ticket and CCI responded with a request that he not set a timeout beyond 20 minutes to avoid a strain on their server. This was not acceptable to O’Brien who instructed CCI to fix the server promptly and threatened to publish a bad review of their services online if CCI continued to make his site late to market by failing to provide adequate services.
CCI responded by disabling O’Brien’s account, but not telling him why. It then took him three attempts over the course of two days for him to get an answer from their online chat support stating that a mistake had been made and he would have access to his account shortly. The next day his site was disabled and he received an email stating that his account was suspended for misconduct because of the bad review threat. O’Brien has since published a negative review of CCI on Complaints Board under the alias Mothers Against CCI Hosting and started a Facebook page full of links to bad reviews written by other customers. He now plans on spreading the word to other consumer complaint sites while waiting for a company in the Netherlands to set up his new server so he can launch his site finally.
For more information visit: Cyberbullying Report: Anti-Bullying and Internet Safety Services cyberbullyingreport.com.
