Slashdot Mirror
How to Fight Name Scraping Scammers?
CurtMonash writes "I was ego-surfing the other day, and was surprised to discover that I was listed as a member of an on-line dating service. It turns out these scamsters generate web pages for lots of (FirstName, LastName) combos, each claiming that the named individual is a member of their service. I posted about this, and discovered other people were upset, at least one had lost interest in a guy because he appeared to be a member, and so on. I've since followed up with lessons learned, a big one being that everybody should have a visible web presence. But frankly, the ideas I've come up with for fighting this kind of reputation scam seem fairly weak. Do Slashdotters have any better ideas?"
"I was ego-surfing the other day, and was surprised to discover that I was listed as a member of the an on-line dating service.
So, did you get any hits?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I've been caught by my girlfriend... she received a message on an online dating service (WTF!!!) from a guy searching for a Fu** friend. This guy was *ME*. Someone stole my picture off Facebook, and sent it to my girlfriend pretending *HE* was *ME*. Maybe I should just deactivate my Facebook account if I want to keep my girlfriend. Or maybe I should prevent her from having an account on an online dating service!
I got an friend invite on Myspace from my wife... who has an pretty unique first name. She has never had an myspace, but I have encouraged her to create one only for the purpose of reuniting with old real life friends. So I click on it thinking she finally created one... Only to find some really nice looking nekkid blond (not my wife).
I showed it too her, she was not amused, but I found it hysterical.
"I was ego-surfing the other day ..."
My wife's mother, who died back in 2002, looked up her own name soon after she discovered search sites. She found, to her delight, that her rather rare name was the stage name of a porn star, and there was a .com site based on that name. For the rest of her life, she was constantly telling people to check out her web site.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I got a notice that I had signed up for "WeeWorld" which appears to be a MySpace type site with avatars or something. Honestly, I wasn't really interested in the site beyond the fact that, somehow, "I" was now a member. Not only that, but "I" apparently had already communicated with some of "my" friends on there. I quickly assessed the situation and determined that nothing in my e-mail account indicated any hacking there. In fact, the site didn't have any sort of e-mail confirmation. It just took an e-mail address, assumed that the person was giving their real address, and then sent e-mails to that user notifying them whenever someone sent them a message.
So it looked like someone just decided to use my e-mail address in the "e-mail address" line when they signed up. Since the service nicely sent me "my" password when "I" signed up, I used it to log in. Then, I decided to lock "other me" out, so I changed the password. Then I changed the name on the account to "DON'T USE E-MAIL ADDYS THAT AREN'T YOURS" (so all of "other me's" friends would see what he did). Next, I contacted WeeWorld to report the abuse. They offered to close the account. I waited for a few days in the hopes that "other me" would realize that he was now locked out of his profile and had his name changed. Then I had them close the account.
Part of me was satisfied that, perhaps, he learned his lesson. Of course, another part of me realizes that he probably just signed up again with someone else's e-mail address. A very simple e-mail confirmation would stop abuses like this from happening. Sure, an abuser could use a hacked into e-mail account, but it is a simple action that raises the bar above most of the would-be abusers' heads.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
She found, to her delight, that her rather rare name was the stage name of a porn star
Your mother-in-law was Emily Tubgirl?!
Trolling is a art,
Well, its probably because the site in questions on deals with human beings, and isn't catered to the average Welshman's *cough* unique *cough* tastes.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Change your name to something more unique (try to throw in a few numbers).
Leave the country. Try for one of those places without computers. Solitary islands work best.
Have some reconstructive surgery. It is important that your face is altered, but if other parts of your body need work, well, that's your call.
Buy a big fluffy white cat. Not optional.
Design a plan... to take over the world...
I think the better route would be to use a completely unique handle to represent yourself online. For instance, I spent 12 years in the military as both a commanding officer and a chef. Did I mention I was stationed in Mexico? So, when I left the service, I decided to use the handle "CmdrTaco" while browsing my favorite dating and BSDM sites...
WHAT THE HELL!
Someone is posing as me
"October 20, 2007 - Slashdot 10th Anniversary, with CmdrTaco (1)"
Damn him. He has hip glasses and a sexy goatee! How the hell can I compare to that!
I need to track this CmdrTaco bastard down so I can have a better chance on the dating scene.
(captcha=disclaim)
From now on I would like to be known as {FDCCD2BA-EDF4-4b71-A8FD-F7423A51D228} but my friends can call me FDCCD2BA for short.
Hopefully your name isn't listed on http://dontdatehimgirl.com/
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
Mine too!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well, according to Bill Keane, a "notme" is a little ghost-like
figure, that little kids find handy for blaming things on.
I'm sure this is the question everyone wants to ask: What was your mother-in-law's name?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What, you've never owned a notme before? The site gives information about "your notme".
Being named Dave Smith has its benefits. About 15 years ago, I got pulled over, and the cop was laughing about how I had a drivers license in another state, an arrest warrant in another state that I hadn't been too, and half a dozen addresses in California. He still gave me the ticket. I wonder how many Dave Smiths I show up as now. Maybe I'll go outside and do donuts until a cop comes along.
Security through familiarity is why I won't move away from 123 Anystreet.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Yes they do go to meet real people but real people don't join unless they think there are already people have joined(you humans are such sheep in that regard)
So what species are you? Some other highly evolved ape that's mastered web-development?
Anyway to clarify: Humans are the ones you should be inventing on your site. Sheep are the small white wooly ones. You probably don't want them on your dating site. Or maybe you do, I don't want to judge.
Copycat.
I wonder how they feel about that once they glance at those terms & conditions and the like, dispute resolving, etc.
At least it shows your character - what's that you said to the other AC poster? "Shows real backbone."? Seems like you have none.
To top that off: Really, how many more times are you going to mention that FISA thing? You don't know what I, or any of the others you've used that line on, have done with regards to that matter. Nor does it matter what we have or have not done. You don't tell a blind person to suck it up 'cos at least they're not paraplegic, and tell the paraplegic to quit whining because at least they're not dying of necrotizing fasciitis. So, honestly, stop trying to distract people from your practices and your clear refusal to be open and honest about it - despite vehemently stating that you do not believe you did anything wrong whatsoever - by chanting 'FISA' every time.
While we -do- know, from your own admission, that:
- you have lied and deceived
- that you think there's nothing wrong with that
- that you refuse to be open and honest about it (and no, a disclaimer stating that profile data may not actually be truthful doesn't convey "hundreds of the profiles on this site are fake and created by us to lure in new members")
- that you refuse to be open and honest about it to your members now, as per your parent reply
- that you will grasp at straws to try and either take attention away from you or instill some form of misguided guilt upon others for allegedly not paying attention to bigger issues; completely baseless accusations at best
With your only defense being:
- everybody does it (I'm sure your mother's asked you the "If everybody jumps into [some body of liquid], you will too?")
- it's too hard to get a dating site off the ground without doing so (worst sob story on slashdot I've read in a while)
Although I'll agree with you that you are, at least by legal definition, quite likely not defrauding anybody*, I'll agree with the other AC and say that yes, you are indeed, a .. well, you get the idea.
* although collecting their profile data based on the premise that there will be hundreds of profiles for them to scour through, knowing that a portion of those are (or were) completely made-up, may actually be fraud. IANAL. Neither are you.
I do commend you on making your site completely free, however; and I'm sure we seem rather thankless (not that most of us would have anything to thank for, not living in Kentucky and all). However, I do think most of us applaud your free site - we're just not a great fan of the business practice you used to start it up.. but moreover, we're not a great fan of not being honest about it to your members *now*. You were honest about it to us, the Slashdot crowd, so why not to them? As you said, you're not making any money off of the service - you're probably just spending money on it (hosting, etc.). So what do you have to lose?