Thanks to those users who supplied constructive criticism and suggestions for improving our website and offerings. We took recent critiques of a post that had been classified as “attempted piracy” to heart, and went to work exploring alternatives and then testing them with a group of users, both new and old. Based on all the feedback we received and balanced by the technical capabilities of our website we have made some changes. We have added the category “Suspicious activity – threatening or potentially dangerous activity by others” to the main events menu for use by those making reports going forward.
Users made it quite clear that they want CSSN to collect, vet and report about suspicious activities that do not meet the threshold of attempted piracy, and that these events should be properly classified and labelled plainly. To accomplish this CSSN will consider carefully and evaluate each report, and validate/assign the event type category considering the constellation of factors that combine uniquely in each situation. We will then publish in accordance with our established processes.
Further, it was also made clear that you not only want the information, you want to see it on our very popular and easy to use interactive maps, but in a way that differentiates suspicious activity from other piracy events. To that end you will now see Suspicious activity events on the dedicated piracy (and all other interactive maps), but designated by the color yellow marker to make it easier to identify this subset on the spectrum of piracy activity and facilitate risk assessment and planning. 
Additionally, we reviewed all of the previously classified Attempted piracy events and decided to re-categorize 2 of them. The recent event off Trinidad that brought this issue to the forefront, and one older event from 2017, also off Trinidad. We have updated these records event type and in accordance with their new category they now appear as yellow markers on the maps, making them easy to identify and distinguish.
Our mission and values remain unchanged – CSSN informs, captains decide.
We continue to welcome your feedback, contact us.