Pastebin To Up Content Policing With Fresh Staff

The owner of Pastebin, the site frequented by Anonymous to post details recovered from hacks, has said he hopes to better monitor sensitive content posted to the site by hiring additional staff.

Jeroen Vader, the 28-year-old Dutch owner, claimed extra staff would shorten response times to abuse reports and would allow for better analyses of posts to judge whether they needed to be removed.

Abuse reports

Speaking to the BBC, Vader said: “We do indeed not allow people to post email lists and other personal information that does not belong to them. That said, we are very much aware that it happens a lot, but trying to automatically filter out such pastes is a pretty impossible task.

“Instead we heavily rely on our users to report items that do not comply with our FAQ. On average we get over 1,000 abuse reports a day via our on-site abuse report system, and another 200 or so come in via email.”

In its FAQ section, Pastebin says it will investigate unusually high traffic pastes and will remove any which contain email lists, login details, stolen source code, password lists, personal data and spam links. Vader’s own details featured in one paste, though it was quickly taken down.

Due to Pastebin’s high traffic however – it currently records an average of 17 million unique visitors per month – such investigations appear to be prohibitive to improve other areas of the site.

“I am constantly working on the site, seven days a week, and when all the abuse reports have been dealt with, I try to improve the site’s software,” Vader said. “Once in a while new features are implemented, but most of the work goes into keeping everything running smooth, keeping the site free(ish) of spam, and handling removal request.”

Other impairments to Pastebin’s operations include DDoS attacks. The BBC reported that in February the site was crippled by a botnet attack involving 22,000 unique IP addresses. Vader added that for the last three months the site had to contend with some form of DDoS attack daily, though he said a new hoster should help resolve this issue.