Just the environment where the impersonations are theorized to take place — given the type of people who likely use the service, the ways people interract on the site, what the site is used for... imo, it seems unlikely that changing an "a" to a "4" is going to result in a damaging impersonation.
It's a nigligible inconvenience for a significant increase in security. This sort of situation has happened before where different numbers and symbols are used to pass off as other users in online communities.
In Wikimedia projects (and MediaWiki systems in general) you actually have to pay attention to other people's usernames (when working with histories and in article discussions), and at least in Wikipedia long long time ago there was a lot of trolling/vandalism where people impersonated other users (particularly the admins) and made bunch of sockpuppets with tiny variations in names when they got banned. So this rule makes sense.
Defense against homoglyph attacks is a good thing. I'm sure they haven't had a big issue, but they have a homoglyph detector and that's a great idea. More systems should implement a generalized homoglyph detector.
All the options you give are allowed, only what OP shows gives the error. While it seems like a good idea, seems the implementation is terrible and only filters out the most obvious ones.
19 replies
They are taking measures to ensure its not too easy to impersonate other users. Seems like a good idea to me.
Agreed. I know it must be inconvenient to come across this thing. But people have to realize, it is done for a reason.
You wouldn't want anyone to pretend they're you online and ruining your credibility and reputation.
That certainly does seem to be their goal, but, imo, it's a bit extreme — especially given the context.
Which context ?
Just the environment where the impersonations are theorized to take place — given the type of people who likely use the service, the ways people interract on the site, what the site is used for... imo, it seems unlikely that changing an "a" to a "4" is going to result in a damaging impersonation.
It's a nigligible inconvenience for a significant increase in security. This sort of situation has happened before where different numbers and symbols are used to pass off as other users in online communities.
This community is called Mildly Infruating, after all 😜
I think you mildly infuriated some users here.
And nigligible didn't? You just got wooshed.
In Wikimedia projects (and MediaWiki systems in general) you actually have to pay attention to other people's usernames (when working with histories and in article discussions), and at least in Wikipedia long long time ago there was a lot of trolling/vandalism where people impersonated other users (particularly the admins) and made bunch of sockpuppets with tiny variations in names when they got banned. So this rule makes sense.
That's actually really cool that they do that. Reduces the ability of people to scam because they cannot pick intentionally-similar usernames.
Defense against homoglyph attacks is a good thing. I'm sure they haven't had a big issue, but they have a homoglyph detector and that's a great idea. More systems should implement a generalized homoglyph detector.
Kudos to wikibooks
Kalcifer KaIclfer Kaloifer Кalcifer
Etc....
I tried out.
All the options you give are allowed, only what OP shows gives the error. While it seems like a good idea, seems the implementation is terrible and only filters out the most obvious ones.
Room for improvement!!!
the scenes when one won't be able to choose 5318008.
Ha, that username is apparently not allowed. They require that a username contain at least one letter.
That error message is pretty bad, characters does not mean letters.
S318008 it is then.
try "Karushifā"