Here is a message I sent on May 23, 2004 to the Slashdot editors.
I saw yesterday this URL in the list of sites coming to my blog. It shows lots of comments -- about ten per day -- attributed to my name, but none of them is from me. Apparently, someone opened an account on Slashdot using my real name and issued posts looking as if they were written by me.
My user number on Slashdot is 644694 and here is my user page under the name "rpiquepa." The "anonymous coward" using my real name as user name is using the account number 780675. This person has even used my blog address as his URL, which of course, is even more confusing. This is a forgery.
To summarize, comments written by me are signed "rpiquepa" while those signed "Roland Piquepaille" have been written by someone trying to hide himself.
What can I do? Can you cancel this forged account with my identity, including all these false comments?
On a more general way, how can you prevent this kind of security breach? I haven't seen a way to report this directly to Slashdot, such as a spoof@slashdot.org address, used by other organizations. So I also reported the incident on SourceForge (ticket number 958635) yesterday evening.
Anyway, I'm pretty pissed off that someone is using my name to publish things I never thought or written. It could be highly damageable to my reputation.
Can you help?
Thank you in advance.
The "real" Roland Piquepaille.
Update on April 24, 2004 (8:54pm Paris time)
David Burley, from SourceForge.net, informed me that his organization didn't provide support for usurped identities on Slashdot.org. He told me to look at a section of a FAQ from Slashdot, named "Someone is posting under a false identity, or an account designed to look like someone else." It's not terribly encouraging to read it.
There are many accounts in the system that were created for malicious purposes. There are dozens of variations on names like 'CmdrTaco' and 'Hemos' as well as heads of many corporations, writers, etc. We don't tamper with existing accounts though, so there's nothing we can do about it. Over the last few years, numerous restrictions have been placed on accounts to make this difficult (for example the system won't let you create an account named 'CmdrTaco' because there already is one listed) but that doesn't prevent any of the hundreds of existing ninnies from doing what ninnies do.
In most cases, these folks are caught by moderation, and they eventually get karma that is low enough to make it obvious that they are impostors.
So how long the fake Roland Piquepaille will continue to post comments under my name? It's anyone guess as of today.
9:35:26 AM
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