Slashdot Mirror
Cybersquatting and Social Media
Earthquake Retrofit writes "Brian Krebs has a story about cybersquatting on social networking sites. He cites cases of people being impersonated and reports: 'A site called knowem.com allows you to see whether your name or whatever nickname you favor is already registered at any of some 120 social networking sites on the Web today. For a $64.95 fee, the site will register all available accounts on your behalf, a manual process that it says takes one to five business days. Whether anyone could possibly use and maintain 120 different social networking accounts is beyond my imagination. I would think an automated signup service like knowem.com would be far more useful if there was also a service that people could use to simultaneously update all of these sites with the same or slightly different content.' Is it time to saddle up for a new round of Internet land grabs?"
A Schneier blog post earlier this month pointed out a related story about how not establishing yourself on social sites, combined with the frequent lack of validation for friend requests, can provide identity thieves with a tempting target .
just what ive always wanted, to be on myspace, facebook, twitter, bebo, all at once, 120 times
courage mateship sacrifice endurance
Whether you use the sites or not, it requires very little effort to grab your name early, in case you change your mind. Use a service, or something like PasswordGorilla to help manage the accounts. If you run a business with a recognizable brand it's pretty much a requirement to at least register your name.
The mere fact that social networking sites have become so integrated into our society that you can become the target of identity theft terrifies me. There seems just something fundamentally wrong about it.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
I would think an automated signup service like knowem.com would be far more useful if there was also a service that people could use to simultaneously update all of these sites with the same or slightly different content.
Um...Ping.fm
http://transformativeworks.org/
completely avoid social networking sites, rather than playing "whack a mole" by trying to sign up to them all?
I've got a single home page on my own server, which contains minimal personal information. All of my other "home" pages are simply a link back to this page. I don't use social networking sites, as the social network itself is personal information.
People have been wrongly using my name for years.
Signed:
Anonymous Coward.
because I don't
checked out some names:
/. name 24 times
spiff 74 times
snake 75 times
My
4nic8 a mesially 13 times.
In the list of sites on knowem, there is indeed a site that allows users to simultaneously update their status across social networking sites... http://hellotxt.com/
"Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal;" - H.P. Lovecraft
Let's you update multiple social networking and bookmarking sites all at once or based on groupings (i.e. business / social ). Of course it doesn't support 120 sites, but I think the count is up to around 40 now...
Someone is impresonating me on Facebook! I demand action!
Sincerely,
John Smith
I am not left-handed, either!
It's a society of media.
A word of caution: I used this service and Digg banned my account for "multiple accounts" since my account was created at the Knowem place along with other Knowem users' accounts.
All I wanted was one Digg account under my brand's trademark name and now that name is stuck with a disabled account.
Parents start to give a nickname when the child is born. The nickname must be country unique and atomic.
The nickname is then registered on civil registration forms.
Then MrX registred on myspace that lives in France is clearly not the MrX from China.
Yay! Now in order to impersonate someone, you only need to break into one single account and immediately have access to his 120 social networking services. The wonders of progress!
http://www.usernamecheck.com/ will check whether a username is taken at dozens of sites for you, for free. signing up for the few relevant ones really isn't that difficult, certainly not worth $65.
.
. hmmm
Link to your legitimate profiles from your single personal home page/site and put a fat disclaimer there stating that any other profile with your name and/or information not explicitly mentioned is not yours. Assuming search engines do their job right and rank your home page before any skanky impersonator, problem is pretty much solved.
... to base identification on resources that are so easily manipulated?
I mean, it would be as moronic as my bank issuing a line of credit in my name to anyone who walked in off the street knowing my SSN and birthdate. Even the abuse of social networks to discredit or defame an individual tells more about the shortcomings of the suckers that fall for it. Using the old-fashioned 'networks' like gossip around the water cooler predates Al Gore inventing the Internet. And people that are so socially inept to recognize such manipulation aren't the sorts I'd want to deal with in either a business or social setting.
Have gnu, will travel.
MisInfo is a really slippery game though, because if you yourself posted fake info everywhere, then some spammer making up fake info hides in *your* misinfo.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So what if there are N social networking sites ? N-5 will fail within a year or two. If you must buy into the social-media hype, pick one or two big ones and stick with them. There's little point in having profiles on obscure sites if you're not going to be an active member, right ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
People under 50, making more than $20,000 a year, with low-moderate minimum computer experience, *are* "society at large".
They're getting into social media. Haltingly, tentatively, but surely.
This is not "Revenge of the Nerds" between the Nerds & Betas anymore.
No citation today, because I agree it's a non-random usergroup, but the outliers are now under 50%, I am confident. It will be even more pronounced in the next five years.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The exact tableau of services will morph, to be sure, but the theme of Net Sharing is here to stay. Youtube is not really a revenue generator - it's a pre-emptive purchase "so no one else has it".
What we are seeing is that an Industry Leader is proving tricky to unseat. There are say five big players per category, and then an ecosphere of niche adjuncts.
We know of for example:
"HomeBase Sites" : MySpace, FaceBook, (choice of 2);
MicroBlogging: Twitter, (your choice of 2)
Messengers: AIM, Yahoo, MSN,(your choice of 2)
PG Video: YouTube, Google Video, (your choice of 2)
I think it's less about direct revenue sometimes than maintaining visibility footholds.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Great post sir.
I have chosen the "avoid them all" method as well, but I like your theme. Not counting stray hacks, the control provided by your own webpage feels like a tie-breaker vs. trolls.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Is it time to saddle up for a new round of Internet land grabs?
Here we go again! Where it stops nobody knows... and few people seem to care.
[signature]
Well "I don't use any of these sites!" you said.
For those of you who didn't go to the website, one of them is Slashdot.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
It's one of the most disappointing phenomena of the Internet. With all the Internet's potential, all people care about it turns out is looking at pictures of themselves and sending OMG messages.
This is my PGP key.
There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My key is my best friend.
It is my who I am.
I must remember it as I remember my life.
My key, without me, is useless.
Without my key, I am anonymous.
I must post my message signed.
I must post better than any enemy who is trying to impersonate me.
I must reg him before he regs me. I will....
Before CmdrTaco I swear this creed. /.'s and there is no enemy, but Peace.
My key and myself are the defenders of my IP.
We are the masters of our enemy.
We are the saviors of my Second Life.
So be it, until victory is
http://www.omgitswebsite.com/JosephCatrambone.asc
What, you wanted a Digg account named "Anonymous Coward"?
I resisted the temptation to lambaste him for suggesting that I would consider my twitter friends an audience and rambled off something about 'friends and family, real and internet.'
He was disappointed to learn that none of my friends were interested in his spamesque, coaching, pointy-hairisms.
I didn't tell him it was b/c we tend to recognize spam when we see it.
He is my friend in real life, after all.
I think it is kind of bad that someone would be so paranoid of their names and aliases being used by others (some just by coincidence, others by intent) that they would give a site the power to register them on a whole bunch of sites, many of which you may not want anything to do with. Many of them are useless. That is why MySpace and Facebook are dominant, because they stamped out or are in the process of stamping out other sites. Social networking is a difficult area to maintain a high stature in. Anyway, one big issue with this is that one site, knowem.com, will know as much (if not more) about you than yourself and there is a single source that could be hacked by malicious operators or subpoenaed by law enforcement. There goes your privacy....
Even ESPN is putting up stories about someone Twittering this or that. SI has a facebook page they tout every day. Now we are worried someone might want to 'impersonate' you on MySuperNetworkSite.com? Unless you are famous or have a stalker (not mutually exclusive), who the heck is going to try and impersonate you?
I got a private facebook account only because a bunch or former high school and college friends emailed me about it. It's useful since they change jobs and phone numbers occasionally.
I've seen teenagers texting each other while sitting NEXT to each other. Next we shall Twit while next to each other. I'm being out-nerded by teenagers, who have no concept of being a nerd. Web3.0 will be having conversations in person, face to face, except we will be wearing a helmet that has a flatscreen display in front and a mic for speech to text conversion. Wonder if I can patent that.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.