Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman that happened to me (and it was the alleged account of someone I know IRL)
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
Thanks for the heads up
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman thanks for letting everyone know. I shared it with the IndieWeb.social community just now.
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman I only know one celeb who follows plebs: the great Diana Prince.
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
I’m on clone number four or five of a friend of mine. They create an account, use his bio and profile pic, retoot a couple of my toots that my friend had liked, and then DM me to ask if I’ve heard of Bitcoin
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman I've seen and reported several of these pod-person clone accounts, for one particular account four of them so far
FWIW, I decided not to block them because (in theory) that could signal to whoever is doing this that their cloned accounts should stop following me to evade getting reported
They seem to be after relatively credentialed credible sorts of people too
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@dsilverman that happened to me (and it was the alleged account of someone I know IRL)
Same thing happened to me. It was somebody who the last time I interacted with him we were on opposite sides of a proposed privacy law, so I suggested it would make a great comedy/action movie: "Years after their battle over teh Bad Washington Privacy Act, Jon and Jules have to team up to fight an impersonation ring on Mastodon"
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Same thing happened to me. It was somebody who the last time I interacted with him we were on opposite sides of a proposed privacy law, so I suggested it would make a great comedy/action movie: "Years after their battle over teh Bad Washington Privacy Act, Jon and Jules have to team up to fight an impersonation ring on Mastodon"
More positively it led to him posting again here from his real account for the first time in a couple of years. So hey, maybe this will lead to an increase Monthly Active Users numbers?
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More positively it led to him posting again here from his real account for the first time in a couple of years. So hey, maybe this will lead to an increase Monthly Active Users numbers?
@jdp23 @dsilverman it would be nice if he were to be more active here. Although I have to admit, I've gotten used to the idea that you all are NOT people I'll know IRL
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@jdp23 @dsilverman it would be nice if he were to be more active here. Although I have to admit, I've gotten used to the idea that you all are NOT people I'll know IRL
Agreed. Although with people I'm mutuals with here, I think of it more as I don't know them IRL yet.
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E em0nm4stodon@infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman Unfortunately, two of the three websites in your profile, intended to verify your identity, failed to load due to a Cloudfare failure.
Keyoxide is a decentralized open-source service / protocol designed to cryptographically verify a user's identity across various platforms. A decentralized Keybase alternative.
Here's my profile: https://keyoxide.org/hkp/caae2b895a37b493a3d5bf992b776f390fc927b5
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman I had this pulled on my by several pro-Russian accounts operating from chinese servers in 2024. It’s nasty!
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman This is a deliberate effort to enshittify our platform.
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
I tried to reply as if I had been taken in, but what/whoever is running them is not really up to holding a conversation.
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@dsilverman Unfortunately, two of the three websites in your profile, intended to verify your identity, failed to load due to a Cloudfare failure.
Keyoxide is a decentralized open-source service / protocol designed to cryptographically verify a user's identity across various platforms. A decentralized Keybase alternative.
Here's my profile: https://keyoxide.org/hkp/caae2b895a37b493a3d5bf992b776f390fc927b5
@AtanasE Yeah, they were early attempts at verification. This has become the primary way now:
How do I verify my account on Mastodon and the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse
(fedi.tips)
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman PLEASE KNOW I am not impersonating anyone, I started here for the first time with these underscores. Lol.
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman all I got today was somebody looking for money. Nobody who followed me, nobody I followed, nobody I'd ever seen post anywhere, in a private mention.
I thought those were restricted to mutual follows.
Blocked.
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@AtanasE Yeah, they were early attempts at verification. This has become the primary way now:
How do I verify my account on Mastodon and the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse
(fedi.tips)
@dsilverman I wasn't aware of that. Thank you!
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Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
@dsilverman
well done. thank you.
