Possible username abuse? (Resolved by lemm.ee admins Aug 29 2023)
Hey folks. A question for you.
I'm RickRussell_CA on lemmy.world, kbin.social, lemmy.ml, and beehaw.org.
When I saw that lemm.ee was coming up in the rankings, I decided that perhaps I should stake my claim here. But, as you may guess, there is already a RickRussell_CA on lemm.ee.
It's even using the profile picture that I had originally used on lemmy.world. It's made 1 comment (on a since deleted post) and no submissions.
I've used the "Forgot password" link and it's definitely not my account, as it doesn't recognize my email.
I understand that this is a risk under the Fediverse model, but I'm a bit worried that somebody staked this out as a way of impersonating me.
Is there any way to address this?
EDIT: lemm.ee admins saw this post, and banned the account. Thanks to them!
5 replies
Near name attacks are always a issue online, doubly so in federated places.
Even if you got your own domain name [email protected]
Someone could register [email protected]
Yes, I'm aware. Although it's not "near name" in this case, it's the same username. Which I understand to be a risk of the federated model, I just thought I'd ask to see if there was any recourse.
One hopes that instance & community admins and others will look closely at the fully qualified username before pulling the trigger on bans, and that sort of thing.
It's near name, because the only difference is the domain name.
this seems like a great way to get your username taken on a bunch of other instances too
I guess I asked for it.