How We Handle Abusive Usage (Basecamp)
The How We Handle Abusive Usage policy explains how the company identifies, investigates, and addresses abusive use of its products while prioritizing privacy, fairness, and human oversight. Each case follows a structured process—discovery, investigation, and decision—guided by evidence, with account termination or other actions taken depending on the severity of the violation.
How we handle abusive usage
Last updated: [date of last update]
We build our products* to give teams a better way to work. We are proud of that purpose and trust that our customers use our products for appropriate endeavors.
Sometimes, though, we discover potential abusive usage as detailed in our Use Restrictions policy. When that happens, we investigate using the following guiding principles and process.
*This process applies to any product created and owned by [name of company]. That includes [name(s) of product(s)/service(s)].
Guiding Principles
Human oversight
Who’s “we”, you ask? It’s us: folks from the [name of company] team. Our internal abuse oversight committee includes our executives, [names of executives], and representatives from multiple departments across the company. On rare occasions for particularly sensitive situations or if legally required, we may also seek counsel from external experts.
Balanced responsibilities
We have an obligation to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us. We do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process.
Focus on evidence
We base our decisions on the evidence available to us: what we see and hear account users say and do. We document what we observe and ask whether that observable evidence points to a restricted use.
Process
Every case goes through the same general process:
Discovery
Investigation
Decision, sometimes with right to an appeal
How do we discover potential abuse?
From our experience, we learn about potential abuse because:
Someone alerts us. We give abuse reports our full care and attention. Our Support team also responds to every question or comment that comes in. If we notice anything in those emails that points to a violation, we will look into it.
We notice an anomaly in our business operations monitoring. We monitor a range of things about our products, like signup volume and error rates of web requests. If we see something weird with those numbers, we get to the bottom of it.
We stumble upon public web content that links an individual or organization to a [name of company] product. We aren’t scouring the Internet looking for those links, but if we do come across any, we check them out.
This list is not exhaustive; there are always edge cases. We will update the list if we find regular new avenues.
How do we investigate?
We focus on the evidence:
Language and imagery used by users on the account
Evidence of account users’ power and/or ability to act on spoken claims
Publicly available information about account users
We strive to balance privacy and safety for all those involved:
We make every effort to complete our investigations without accessing a customer account. For instance, if there are screenshots or public documents available, we review those. We also consider whether it is appropriate to involve the account owner in a given investigation and seek additional evidence from them.
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