As the conversation online escalated, I began to see more and more registrations on the site and I was really excited that it was taking off so well. After the initial heat of the foreclosure topic the posts became a little more mundane and the site traffic began to taper off. Shortly before Christmas, there was a rash of burglaries in our subdivision that again created quite a stir on the site. One of the homes that was broken into was vacant and there was rumors that someone had intended to use it as a lab for manufacture of methamphetamine. Our neighborhood was in a state of shock! One evening I was archiving some of the earlier posts and noticed that during October and November there were a huge number of registrations. When I double checked the emails used to register I discovered that none of the people registering were actually residents of the subdivision. At the next Homeowners Association board meeting this was a hot topic and one of the board members, a IT professional, led the discussion of putting some security on the site. I’ll admit I know nothing about this topic but I was glad that someone had the skills and willingness to step up and secure the site. He contacted TeleSign a company that safeguarded his corporate web environment and they were able to provide a low cost and highly effective solution known as two factor authentication. Now when anyone attempts to get on the site they are required to verify themselves by providing a valid phone number. TeleSign then sends them a special identification number, called a PIN, which in turn they use to access the site. This additional security measure makes sure they are who they say they are. With the two factor authentication in place we are now 100 percent certain that a site user actually lives in the subdivision. As a footnote, the police investigation into the burglaries made use of our website logs and they were eventually able to apprehend some of the criminals. We applaud TeleSign for making our community safer and a wonderful place to live! |
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