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How to Fight Name Scraping Scammers?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:11 AM
from the trademark-your-name dept.
from the trademark-your-name dept.
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?"
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Web presence? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Web presence? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Web presence? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Web presence? (Score:5, Insightful)
I had the same question. I've been actively trying to *REDUCE* my web presence, at least with my real name and email.
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I've been caught... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've been caught... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I've been caught... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Libel (Score:5, Interesting)
> Do Slashdotters have any better ideas?
File libel lawsuits.
Re:Libel (Score:5, Funny)
I think the better route would be to use a completely unique handle to represent yourself online. For instance, I spent 12 years in the military as both a commanding officer and a chef. Did I mention I was stationed in Mexico? So, when I left the service, I decided to use the handle "CmdrTaco" while browsing my favorite dating and BSDM sites...
WHAT THE HELL!
Someone is posing as me [okcupid.com]
"October 20, 2007 - Slashdot 10th Anniversary, with CmdrTaco (1)"
Damn him. He has hip glasses and a sexy goatee! How the hell can I compare to that!
I need to track this CmdrTaco bastard down so I can have a better chance on the dating scene.
(captcha=disclaim)
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Re:Libel (Score:5, Insightful)
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Problem will solve itself. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Names are not unique (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [yournotme.com], 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.
Re:Names are not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
But when a website was launched to check how unique your name is [yournotme.com]
Is anybody else horrified by that domain name?
[/grammarnazi]
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Oh, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Common Names are like that too... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Turn the tables! (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
* 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.
Was it really you, or just "your" name? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [jlove.com] 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.
Re:Was it really you, or just "your" name? (Score:5, Funny)
From now on I would like to be known as {FDCCD2BA-EDF4-4b71-A8FD-F7423A51D228} but my friends can call me FDCCD2BA for short.
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Hmm. Just the kind of person I'm interested in. (Score:5, Informative)
and discovered other people were upset, at least one had lost interest in a guy because he appeared to be a member,
Well, specifically, he found a blog entry [livejournal.com] from someone else, saying:
I went back, caught his name and cyberstalked him. I found out he was an investor. I found out that he was a runner. And soon enough, I found him on a singles page called "Jlove.com," a website for Jewish singles.
So she believes everything she reads online, she assumes that just because the name matches it's the right person and she makes no effort to speak to him face to face. Yeah. Just the kind of woman I'm interested in getting to know.
I think the guy she was cyberstalking had a lucky escape.
Re:You caught a wave! (Score:5, Funny)
"I was ego-surfing the other day ..."
My wife's mother, who died back in 2002, looked up her own name soon after she discovered search sites. She found, to her delight, that her rather rare name was the stage name of a porn star, and there was a .com site based on that name. For the rest of her life, she was constantly telling people to check out her web site.
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Re:You caught a wave! (Score:5, Funny)
Mine too!
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Re:I run a dating site...this isn't "scamming" (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, assholes like you commit fraud, so everybody else should just live with it.
Besides, if you are the real Ehrich Weiss [wikipedia.org], even if your victim got you thrown in jail you would just break out.
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Re:I run a dating site...this isn't "scamming" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:I run a dating site...this isn't "scamming" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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