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'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 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.
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?
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.
Mine too!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.