It's your life, and you can decorate it as you like
#$@&!!!!
A friend posted a link about googling your online name as opposed to your real name. What the hey, right? I tried it with firstcrusader just to see what came out. Oddly enough, my deviantart account is the first result (never mind the fact that I haven't touched the thing in ages. My Twitter account is number 3, then other than a couple of random people using firstcrusader as their s/n in various forums, it's all LJ entry stuff. Pretty benign--if it's not me, it's just someone random who is obviously different.
Except for one entry. The second. Which was for an account for w3top.org--a service apparently similar to Twitter. In fact, it uses my Twitter userpic and my "tweets." There's only one problem with this, kids. Can you guess what it is? That's right, I don't actually *have* a w3top account! I even tried a couple of different passwords just to make sure I didn't sign up for one and forget about it (heck, I'm on Twitter mostly as an experiment anyway). Also, according to "my" account on w3top, I live in Sweden and am interested in women.
Part of me wonders if I should even worry about this. I mean, my tweets are more like mini-rants and notes-to-self than anything (read 'em here, if you want). Whoever's stealing my account info stopped posting on October 21 (actually, it looks like *all* posts were made on that day)--the person probably realized how pointless stealing a Twitter account is and stopped.
The amusing thing in this is that the non-me account has a significantly greater number of contacts through there than I have through Twitter. The frightening thing is that I can't find ANY corporate info about w3top. Which means that I have no idea how to contact them about this violation. A google search claims that they're a free dating service and that other Twitter users have discovered the same thing.
Darnit, this is identity theft. On a small scale, to be sure, but it's not right. And I have no idea what to do about it.
A friend posted a link about googling your online name as opposed to your real name. What the hey, right? I tried it with firstcrusader just to see what came out. Oddly enough, my deviantart account is the first result (never mind the fact that I haven't touched the thing in ages. My Twitter account is number 3, then other than a couple of random people using firstcrusader as their s/n in various forums, it's all LJ entry stuff. Pretty benign--if it's not me, it's just someone random who is obviously different.
Except for one entry. The second. Which was for an account for w3top.org--a service apparently similar to Twitter. In fact, it uses my Twitter userpic and my "tweets." There's only one problem with this, kids. Can you guess what it is? That's right, I don't actually *have* a w3top account! I even tried a couple of different passwords just to make sure I didn't sign up for one and forget about it (heck, I'm on Twitter mostly as an experiment anyway). Also, according to "my" account on w3top, I live in Sweden and am interested in women.
Part of me wonders if I should even worry about this. I mean, my tweets are more like mini-rants and notes-to-self than anything (read 'em here, if you want). Whoever's stealing my account info stopped posting on October 21 (actually, it looks like *all* posts were made on that day)--the person probably realized how pointless stealing a Twitter account is and stopped.
The amusing thing in this is that the non-me account has a significantly greater number of contacts through there than I have through Twitter. The frightening thing is that I can't find ANY corporate info about w3top. Which means that I have no idea how to contact them about this violation. A google search claims that they're a free dating service and that other Twitter users have discovered the same thing.
Darnit, this is identity theft. On a small scale, to be sure, but it's not right. And I have no idea what to do about it.