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Cybersquatting and Social Media

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-or-a-reasonable-facsimile-thereof dept.

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 .

22 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. lol by landaishan · · Score: 2, Funny

    just what ive always wanted, to be on myspace, facebook, twitter, bebo, all at once, 120 times

    --
    courage mateship sacrifice endurance
    1. Re:lol by johny42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The fact that some people need/want to be registered on 120 social networking sites at once means that something's horribly wrong here.

      There should be a single social network that is flexible and open enough so that there's no need for any other one. In fact, there already is such a network. It is called the Internet.

      We just need to utilize it the right way. Distributed social networking is the future, not a service that tries (and very probably fails) to manage your identity on 120 different centralized social networking services.

    2. Re:lol by Jurily · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The fact that some people need/want to be registered on 120 social networking sites at once means that something's horribly wrong here.

      I may only want one, but I might have friends scattered across, say, five of these. And I wouldn't want anyone to impersonate me on the 115 remaining sites.

      There should be a single social network that is flexible and open enough so that there's no need for any other one. In fact, there already is such a network. It is called the Internet.

      You don't want to be identified as yourself across the whole Internet. Trust me.

    3. Re:lol by Smivs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ... but I might have friends scattered across, say, five of these.

      This whole social networking thing is stupid. It's got to the point where it's not 'Who you know' but 'who you know depends on what site you use!' Real, proper friends are people you actually meet and talk to, go out with, enjoy life with. Even distant friends can be phoned/skyped/emailed. Social networking is just a pointless way of giving people you don't know too much information about you. If you want a proper cyber-presence get a Homesite...it's cheap and easy enough, and far more secure as you have full control and there are no 'terms and conditions'.

      --
      Smivs on the intertubes!
    4. Re:lol by Jurily · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Social networking is just a pointless way of giving people you don't know too much information about you.

      Exactly. For example, I know for a fact that iwiw.hu (the largest such site in Hungary, with over 2M members in a 10M country) is used extensively by the National Security Office. They actually have a "shadow" version of it, where they connect your relevant contacts to you by hand. Of course, this being "national security", it does not officially exist, and there is absolutely no outside control over it. Pretty fucking scary.

      I wouldn't be surprised for something like this to exist in other countries.

    5. Re:lol by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The key is to prevent things that could be used to identify you from getting out in the first place.

      Your name is the basic piece of information someone interested in you will have. There are probably hundreds, maybe thousands of people with the same name, so they need more. A photo. Date of birth. Address. Anything that separates you from your namesakes.

      Unfortunately most social networking sites ask for this info, and worse still even if you don't put a photo of yourself up other people can tag you on their photos. That is the worst aspect of Facebook, the thing that pushed me over the edge and made me delete my account.

      I came to the conclusion that, in the end, the best thing to do is put out misinformation. It makes it harder for people to find information on you, and even if they do a lot of it will be contradictory. It helps prevent people from googling you successfully, especially if you have a common name. My name, for example, is shared by some religious nutter who is a member of various hard line Islamic groups, so I created lots of random profiles on different sites with the same name, and now if you google it you get more than just me and him on the first page. An image search will pull up lots of random photos I stole from other random people's profiles.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Stake your claim by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Stake your claim by dyefade · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How does that help prevent people impersonating you?

    2. Re:Stake your claim by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Informative

      Many businesses currently use FaceBook and Twitter, and I would imagine the numbers will only increase. What it's 'meant' for often has little to do with how it will be used.

      Even if businesses just watch for opinions and complaints, it's probably something worth their time.

    3. Re:Stake your claim by CheddarHead · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most of the scams seem to rely on you having an account on at least one of the social networking sites. They use the info from that site to impersonate you on another site. If you didn't use any of the sites then it would be much harder for them to get the info needed to impersonate you convincingly. They might still be able to convince strangers, but people who really know you, and thus trust you, wouldn't be fooled.

      Also, if you totally ignore these sites (like I do) then it would be doubly hard to convince any of your friends and family. Anyone who knows me would probably laugh if they got a friends invite supposedly coming from me on Facebook or some other social site. They would either assume it was a joke or a scam, or they'd call my wife to ask if I was feeling OK.

      So, I agree with FreakyGreenLeaky that ignoring these sites solves this problem for the most part. Knowem.com is solution to a problem that doesn't really exist for many if not most of us.

    4. Re:Stake your claim by slimjim8094 · · Score: 2, Funny

      One of the sites is slashdot.

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
  3. Scary by mc1138 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Scary by FreakyGreenLeaky · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Citation please. How has social networking sites become "so integrated into our society?" Society at large really couldn't give a shit about social networking sites. They're too busy getting on with life (and having one).

      Sites such as facebook are just another in a long line of silly fads. It will pass, just like geocities.

  4. multi-update by Aerynvala · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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/
  5. Wouldn't it be more secure to ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  6. Hey! by bensafrickingenius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Someone is impresonating me on Facebook! I demand action!
    Sincerely,
    John Smith

    --
    I am not left-handed, either!
  7. Banned From Digg via Knowem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:It's a society by ssintercept · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The fact that some people need/want to be registered on 120 social networking sites at once means that something's horribly wrong here.

    It's a society of media.

    It's a society of attention whores.

    --
    "You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
  9. Making it easier for the impostors by Arancaytar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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!

  10. Re:obvious solution by thogard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So are you going to trademark your kid?

  11. "I don't use any of these sites!" by slimjim8094 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

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    I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    1. Re:"I don't use any of these sites!" by Dan541 · · Score: 2, Funny

      /. isn't a social networking site. It's a peer spellchecker for people with too much free tyme.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"