Slashdot Mirror
Defending Self In a Case of On-Line Identity Theft?
SoccerDad41 writes "I am a systems administrator for an Indiana-based bricks-n-clicks retailer currently suspended because an unscrupulous typosquatter stole my name and registration information for his/her fraudulent domain registration. My company hired a third party service to protect their trademark by identifying and terminating infringing web sites. The third party identified a domain name, performed a WhoIs lookup & issued a complaint in compliance within ICANN's rules. This was presumably all reported back to our Legal department and it was noticed that the name on the domain registration matched mine. I have a locally uncommon ethnic last name so an immediate connection to me was made & although I protested my absolute innocence in the matter, I have been suspended on grounds of violating non-compete policies pending proof that it isn't me. The fraudulent domain registration was made with a different registrar (let's call them Registrar B) than the one my company uses (let's call them Registrar A). The public parts of the registration information at Registrar B match pretty exactly those of my legitimate domain registrations at Registrar A, including Registrar A's mailing address and phone number. The only things left out in the mailing address are the reference to a domain name and ATTN: Registrar A. Of course the anonymized email address differs as well. Surely I'm not the first in the Slashdot community to find myself in this situation. I'd like to avoid incurring the cost of a lawyer but I am intent on maintaining my good name and continued employment. What are my rights and responsibilities in this matter? What is my best course of action? How did you resolve this issue? How can I prove it's not me?"
Get in contact with a lawyer and check what your options are, but try to find a lawyer that knows what internet is about. Evidence on the net is always a tricky thing. If the registrar is in the country where you live you may have some legal options to use to get evidence behind who did the fraudulent registration.
If the domain points to a web server somewhere it's also possible to check who is owning that server and is behind the web page.
But if your address is on the registration you may actually be able to contact Registrar B and ask them to snail-mail you sufficient data to take control over the domain and then transfer it to the company that employs you. Go in and specify something like that you no longer is able to access the email account for the registration or something. When you are in control of it you may have a possibility to go back and ask them for logs about when it was registered and payment process. It's a case of following the money. However try the lawyer path first because if you find the money behind it then you can also find the culprit.
However placing you on suspension seems to be a bit hard, and you may have a case here too.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I'm unclear on the problem. If the info at registrar B matches your info, then you can gain control of the account and terminate it. If it doesn't, then you'll have proof the lawsuit is baseless. If you can't get control, the denial letter from the registrar will serve as proof the lawsuit is baseless.
Of course, to use this proof in court, you'll need a lawyer. But hopefully just getting a lawyer will encourage your company to cool down and talk sense.
But once all this is over, you need to scrub your info from the registration and replace it with the company's info, since it's their domain. You'll then want to quit this job, since this company is more interested in lawsuits than business.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
...that it wasn't you? Seriously, folks: Maybe this individual is guilty as charged, and he's asking us about ways to defend his actions, or how to create a web of plausible deniability. Think about it: If this situation really happened to a truly innocent party, with looming consequences of job loss (especially in the current economy), don't you think said party would seek the advice of counsel before airing out his laundry on /.?
I know some of us are always willing to lend a hand to a fellow geek, but sometimes I have to shake my head at how quickly some of you jump to defend an individual who claims to be innocent, framed, whatever.
You'd be surprised how many banks, businesses, etc, just go by the name and never stop to think that just because your name ain't Joe smith that it might still be common as dirt. I had to switch banks because they had three of "me" (one of which actually had the same FML, same names for parents, and same name for sister! I actually met them, it was weird, but when you're Irish certain names are as common as Maria is to a Latina) and they would never bother to look at anything except a name. Hell in this digital age there must be thousands of "you" splattered out all over the place, and even if you think your name is unique it probably ain't. Hell my mother made up my late sister's name and when she went to high school there was no less than 4 with the SAME name! It turned out by tracing it back 2 girls had been born a few days after my sis, and when their mothers heard my mom and the nurses talking about the name thought "Hey, that's cute!" and named their girls that and it spread from there.
So if their FIRST reaction is to automatically assume that you did it and use it as an excuse to suspend you? Yeah that is a shithole company and I'd be talking to a lawyer while I hunted for another job. Life is too short to be treated like shit by a company that obviously don't give a shit about their employees.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
>>>Why should they invent an excuse or lie?
They did it to me. I was signed to a 6-month contract, but the company suddenly decided to cut costs by getting rid of half the staff. Since I was only 1 month into the 6 month contract, they invented a bunch of lies: "You eat too much food at lunch time," and "You showed up late for the 11 o'clock meeting [even though I was there at 10:55]," and "You charged 45 hours when you were not given permission [even though just one week earlier the boss said we could go upto 50]."
They had to Lie to make it appear I had broken the terms.
Otherwise my termination would have been a breach of contract.
(BTW don't ever work for Rockwell Collins in Iowa; they treat you poorly.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall