Cybersquatting and Social Media 73
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 .
Stake your claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:lol (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.
Re:lol (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.
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.
Re:Stake your claim (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.
Hey! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerely,
John Smith
Re:It's a society (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a society of media.
It's a society of attention whores.
Re:lol (Score:4, 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'.
Making it easier for the impostors (Score:3, 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!