Blogging My Life...
Guys, a couple of hours ago, some guy or gal registered the the id "rustybrick_" at Twitter. He/She then began going around to those who follow me and following them. In return, this rustybrick_ now has 36 followers, thinking they are following me and they are not. Then this person posts a single twit, about some service he/she is selling.
Please do not be fooled by this impersonator. My Twitter id does not end with an underscore, it is http://twitter.com/rustybrick with no underscore at the end.
This is not the first time I am dealing with an impersonator. I had someone acquire the Gmail address web.rustybrick@gmail.com and try to sell SEO services under my company name. It was a kid from India who just messed up and he gave it up, but this seems more serious.
Seems like I am not the first to be impersonated on Twitter. Is there any way to fix this and kill this fake account?
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Comments
I noticed it too. These are clever guys BTW, they have the same "underscored profiles" for all popular tweeps. Scary.
Posted by: Mani Karthik | January 28, 2009 1:35 AM
Email Twitter Support about it, as they explain in their Impersonation Policy.
Posted by: Jacob Share | January 28, 2009 7:47 AM
yea, did that a few hours ago.
Posted by: Barry Schwartz | January 28, 2009 8:17 AM
I went to http://www.getsatisfaction.com when it happened to me and the account was suspended within an hour.
Posted by: Todd Mintz | January 28, 2009 8:27 AM
That's just crazy! Most of this spam doesn't last long, just report it to @spam! Still, that has to be frustrating and weird to say the least....
Running a popular site like Mac OS Rumors or the Black Hole forum, I definitely worry about having twitter names relevant to our sites taken from us....even though it's difficult to keep track of a whole bunch of accounts, it's better to register them before someone else does it seems, more or less just like domain names!
Posted by: dalaixerces | January 28, 2009 10:10 AM
These Twitter imposters are getting pretty bad. I got a follow notice from your fake account as well as fake accounts for Jill Whalen, Vanessa Fox, and Brian Chappell. Fortunately I was already following all of these people and knew that these accounts were bogus.
The thing that amuses me most is that it seems pretty late in the game to do something like this. Most of these accounts they are trying to mirror have been around for some time. You'd think they would have done something like this early on to capture users looking for these bigger names in search.
Posted by: Mike Wilton | January 28, 2009 11:52 AM
Barry, how'd you contact Twitter? I still have an open unaddressed issue that I sent 2 weeks ago, so emailing them through the method I'm going to guess you used won't do anything for you.
The correct email address for reporting abuse is abuse@twitter.com, an email I just discovered. I believe they'll get to it shortly. I'm surprised it's taking this long though.
Posted by: Tamar Weinberg | January 28, 2009 2:43 PM
I've noticed quite a few of these impostors faking accounts of well-known SEO figures. There is the fake you, there was a fake Tamar (called _Tamar_), and I think I also saw a fake Graywolf and a fake Danny Sullivan. Matt Cutts also reported a fake mattcutts_ account on his blog.
The thing I do, when I see these accounts is report them to @spam on Twitter. All you need to do is tweet "@spam @nameofspammer" and they will investigate the account.
I reported the fake rustybrick_ account this morning, and told them that he was pretending to be you. Hopefully, they will resolve the situation soon.
Posted by: Adam Snider | January 28, 2009 4:09 PM
They finally did. Oddly enough, the fake _Tamar_ account was suspended within 30 minutes, but for Barry's impersonator, it took about 20 hours.
Posted by: Tamar Weinberg | January 28, 2009 11:15 PM
This is actually a common problem occurring now. more and more people are trying this tactic.
Posted by: Nick Stamoulis | January 29, 2009 11:54 AM
Here us another fake twitter user: @_T_a_y_ Says they are a NYU student. Really just a scammer looking for followers. Be wary of this one. VEry stalkerish. Lock down your facebook and twitter. make sure you block this one. Started asking for personal info like social security numbers,etc..Pobably underage, but not sure.
Posted by: Twitterpolice | February 22, 2009 10:09 PM