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 strongly disagree with that conclusion. There are already too many people with cringe-worthy web presences. Besides, most reasonable people know better than to believe everything they read.
Caveat Utilitor
What he's saying is that now some sleazy site might generate your name and if it's uncommon enough you will have web presence that you probably won't like.
Yet, the World Wide Web is accessible as if it were a single source of information. That's what confuses people. All they seem to know is they open up "The Internet" on their PC by clicking the little blue "e".
My blog
It would be nice if the author explained why he thinks that everybody should have a web presence.
I suspect the idea is that if you maintain your own website, people who are Googling you at random will come across that first, and may not pay attention to the shady results at all. Your name is essentially your very own brand; might as well try to paint it in a decent light.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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.
I don't see anything on the jLove Curt Monash page that demonstrates that it's the guy who submitted this article. Surely there's more than one "Curt Monash" in the world?
If the site had scraped your Web site URL, e-mail address, or some other personal identifier that made the page look more "authentic", then there's a scam and a real privacy issue for us to be concerned about. If some computer is just putting together combinations of first and last names and building pages with no further personally identifiable information, that's spam for Google to worry about, not a scam or a privacy infringement for us to worry about.
at least one had lost interest in a guy because he appeared to be a member
The world is full of idiots. Just because someone's NAME (which is far from unique) is on a dating site, they lost interest? I'd say the guy had a lucky escape!
If there's any problem here, it's the Western naming convention that allows thousands of people to end up with the same name. Perhaps we should all become known by our e-mail addresses or IM screennames in the future to avoid this.
But when a website was launched to check how unique your name is [yournotme.com]
Is anybody else horrified by that domain name?
[/grammarnazi]
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
You are being nibbled on by a thousand ants. Shooting them off one at a time is probably not your best option.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Nope, most of them aren't "name scraping" as suggested; they're generating the name pairs from a huge list of first names, a huge list of last names and typically a huge list of cities and states. Also what you suggest could very well count as slander/libel since saying that someone with name X is a member at your dating site is not the same as saying someone with name X is a sex offender.
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I'm assuming that the point is to make sure that people who search for your name (from a perspective boss to a perspective boy/girlfriend) can find the truth. You can also add a note pointing out that a scummy site has falsely used your name.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I had the same question. I've been actively trying to *REDUCE* my web presence, at least with my real name and email.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
In other words, assholes like you commit fraud, so everybody else should just live with it.
Besides, if you are the real Ehrich Weiss, even if your victim got you thrown in jail you would just break out.
You see, in order to get people to join a dating site, you have to fradulantly claim to have people who already joined the dating site to attract them; it's a catch-22 that we cannot avoid.
There, fixed that.
And I'll bet those profiles sound really good and new members wonder why they can't ever get hooked up with the fake profiles.
Smells like scam to me.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
If your girlfriend has an account at a dating service, you don't have a girlfriend, you have a fuckbuddy. Nothing wrong with that, just be sure to use a condom.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
But you're defrauding the people who think that your dating site actually has real members.
It's nice to see how warped a crook's mind is.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.