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?"
It would be nice if the author explained why he thinks that everybody should have a web presence. I don't buy it. I don't have a web presence at all (none of that Myspace/Facebook crap-ola), and I've been pretty successful in staying off the radar that way.
I don't respond to AC's.
> Do Slashdotters have any better ideas?
File libel lawsuits.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
the ideas I've come up with for fighting this kind of reputation scam seem fairly weak.
How about people not believing everything they hear from a source they know nothing about? There's no general solution to the problem of people spreading unfounded rumors other than people being more skeptical of new untested information sources. This will take time as people come to realize that "the internet" isn't a single source of information.
AccountKiller
What makes you think this is some type of scam, and not merely somebody with the same name as you?
No, just because you have an unusual name, it doesn't mean you are the only one with it. I have a very unusual name too. I've never even met anybody with the same surname that wasn't a member of my immediate family. I've googled my own name; I'm the only person with my name that has a web presence. But when a website was launched to check how unique your name is, I discovered that there are at least two other people with my name in my country alone. If I registered on a dating site, those two people would probably feel the same about me.
Unless there's something actually linking you personally to this site, like a photo or bio, I don't see any basis for calling this a scam. Your name is not unique enough to be your property.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
My name is fairly common (last name is Miller) - there's roughly 4 of us in the company I work for (out of 95k employees), and there's about forty of me w/ the same first/last name combo (with various differences in middle names and etc.) in the metro area phone book.
It's not just online, either - I remember awhile when some idiot collection agency kept bugging me over some other guy's debt, because we happened to share the same first/last name combo. I tried to tell them this repeatedly, then finally out of frustration told 'em: "see you in court, idiot!" It never came to fruition, and my credit record never reflected it *shrug*
I guess that's why I never really worried if I see my name online - chances are it's not me anyway.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Hmmm. Hot Jewish single guy on one hand or accepting the Jesus as my Lord and Savior? Sigh.
I have to say, I don't understand how this situation is a dilemma, never mind the whole idea that actually talking to people about who they are -- rather than attempting to search them out on the internet* -- is fundamental to building relationships
So, while JLove probably is being pretty underhanded in making up members, I don't think it can really be blamed for this potential couple's failure to actualize.
--sabre86
*The Internet, TM. Where everything is true!
I know this might be a long shot, but if people really believe all they see when they google your name on google, how about taking advantage of that? After I had googled my own name, I realised how lucky I am because what you find is basically tech reviews done by me and some old karate scoreboards with me even winning some medals. Putting some effort in it, I could probably make it look like I am also doing third wold humanitarian work, help the poor, fight cancer etc. That would probably fly well with all nosy employers and possible future employers that like to google people. And if someoene asks, you could either stick with the story or dismiss it as a coincidence because someone shares your name. For the record, I do have a name that is most likely unique.
Dvorak on Doomtech
* Bots are scraping names off the web
* Scammers use those names to do bad things
* Therefore, you should put your name on the web
That seems like a bad syllogism. I'm not saying the conclusion (that you need a strong web presence) is wrong. I'm just saying that if you're going to make a counter-intuitive conclusion, you need to connect the dots. You know, for us dumb guys.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Originally I was the only person who showed up in search results with my name. Unfortunately, that has changed. I'm very curious how many would-be dates have not happened because of this Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=jeffrey+ferland
SIG: HUP
I run a dating site and profile generation is a necessity. You see, in order to get people to join a dating site, you have to have people who already joined the dating site to attract them; it's a catch-22 that we cannot avoid. Usually the fake profiles have an expiration date of 1 year so after that the accounts just die off but regardless, your name isn't protected by any laws and can be used in works of fiction without your approval. Just get over it cause I've got some guy using my real name in a gospel band and as sickening as I find that, I don't care as I have better things to worry about.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
This was going to b ethe topic of my journal today, but now it won't be. There's a writer for the St Louis Post Dispatch that encourages looking up prospective dates on various sites. This is what was actually finished (it was going to be a long journal)
Personally, I'd have to be a LOT harder up to go out with the sort of freak who would investigate someone before dating them, and someone dumb enough to think that you could actually learn anything about a person from the internet.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Sure, a lot of people aren't very good with writing or page layout, and wind up with gaudy, ugly web "presences". But I *also* put a lot of that blame on some of the "social networking" sites that most people turn to these days to create their pages.
I consider MySpace the biggest contributor to the problem. They may be VERY well known, but it seems like it's difficult NOT to create a cluttered mess out of your profile there! Even small businesses and rock bands trying to use them for some free publicity manage to create a collage of slop, 99% of the time.
By contrast, the older (and less "hip") competitor, Friendster, tends to build clean, neat pages, even when you fill out their forms with a considerable amount of info about yourself.
But the concept itself seems sound to me. If you don't want people running across others (real or fake) with your same name, and mistaking them for you - you need to put your OWN info out there for them to find. At least that way, it's clear when they do a search, that there's more than one possibility for which one is you.
*I* have an online dating account, actually more than one. They are all dormant.
I keep one because it's a charter account, from when they were free - lifetime free for me, and even though I don't use it, it's stupid pride. I'll get rid of it sometime soon probably. Some of the others are actually links to this profile, as they share with a lot of other sites (no, they *run* the other sites under other commercial names).
I don't have a Facebook or MySpace account. These are just too insecure, as much anecdotal evidence proves. I have a Linkdn account, which I use so much that I'm pretty sure I can't even spell Linkdn right, and don't care.
My job site accounts worry me as much.
And having a web presence is pointless for me. My name, permutations of my name, even the middle initial, are all registered. Many of those others are actors, artists, athletes, and politicians, and I didn't register my name back when it would have been trivial. today, I'd be suprised if you could register a fairly common English name at all, squatters and all.
The real problem is of course not being able to connect an attempted registration at some site with a person's 'real' identity. Which is why normal people should not trust any online info, even a photo.
Dating services can be considered unreliable. Meet your date in a public place, and walk there. leave by another route. Have a friend call you 5 minutes after the appointed time. Share nothing significant online.
And if you do see your SO listed on a dating service, give them fair warning. Let them have a week to convince the service that the listing is illegitimate.
Then go after them with the frying pan.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In Vernor Vinge's near-future novel Rainbows End, an anarchist group gets fed up with trying to sort out what information about people is correct or not.
Their solution is to flood the net with false information about everyone, making the net a useless resource for gossip.
Available free and legal online:
http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html
Here are some tips:
1. For starters, unless you signed up, your photograph is intellectual property owned by the person who took the photo. They can contact the site owner(s) and demand it be taken down. Most of the scan sites register with godaddy.com as it makes the true owner blind so I doubt you'd actually be able to find the real owner and hold them legally accountable.
2. If you have suffered some kind of damages or embarrassment (example - argument with your spouse), you can actually start a legal action in your own jurisdiction and sue the legal owner. In lack of the legal entities real identification, you can sue domain name holder proxy and force them to respond in your legal jurisdiction. It makes it a big advantage for you as they will have to contract out responses to your claims to a legal firm in your area.
3. Immediately let the site owner know (and document) that you are not okay with your name and photo being used. Give them a reasonable amount of time to bring it down before commencing legal action.
Now on to the not just legal stuff:
1. Find out who they are and show up at their doorstep. For example, there was a guy who regularly spammed me in Vancouyer, claiming it was his right. I stalked him and showed up at a user group meeting and basically stood in front of him asking him to chose one of two sentences to say. His choices were "I will never spam you again" or "please stop beating my head in with a chair". He got the message. I am going to China later this year to confront someone else while there on normal business. Scaring the shit out of someone works well when they make the connection that they cannot just do shit online with no consequence.
2. Point you profile at his competition.(if you have access)
3. Find out who hosts his site and make it very uncomfortable for them to continue doing so. Make it clear that you have been in touch with authorities and will be demanding an audit of their sites they serve.
4. Disrupt their business model.
Your best bet is probably to ignore it completely though as all of these will take you much more time than it will be worth. At the end of the day they have probably been sneaky enough to get around the rules in a way that will require you to pay money, spend time chasing a ghost.
Good luck.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/