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How to Fight Name Scraping Scammers?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the trademark-your-name dept.

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?"

2 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I've been caught... by Psmylie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Little of column A, little of column B.

    --

    psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo

  2. Hmm. Just the kind of person I'm interested in. by jimicus · · Score: 5, Informative

    and discovered other people were upset, at least one had lost interest in a guy because he appeared to be a member,

    Well, specifically, he found a blog entry from someone else, saying:

    I went back, caught his name and cyberstalked him. I found out he was an investor. I found out that he was a runner. And soon enough, I found him on a singles page called "Jlove.com," a website for Jewish singles.

    So she believes everything she reads online, she assumes that just because the name matches it's the right person and she makes no effort to speak to him face to face. Yeah. Just the kind of woman I'm interested in getting to know.

    I think the guy she was cyberstalking had a lucky escape.