BeAware ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

Dear Fedi Admins of relatively small instances:

If you notice a new account on your instance has a seemingly "real" name attached to their account, it might seem strange at first, but do yourself and Fedi a favor and google that name.

There's some here that are scammers trying to impersonate famous people from somewhat niche entertainment media. Just this morning there was an account registered on a small instance with the name of a professional wrestler.

Thankfully this person had the misfortune of grabbing my attention (wrestling fan) immediately in my timeline and I notified the admin of the potential scam and we were able to mitigate any real harm.

You may not be so fortunate as this in the future.

Some even go so far as to attempt to impersonate lesser known athletes from other professional sports and try to get gullible fans of the team or sport to give them money.

Be safe out there and do your due diligence. It just might save you, your users, or other Fedi users from getting scammed out of their hard earned money.

Thanks for coming to my FED talk. PLEASE boost for reach. This is important.

nathan ,
@nathan@montevista.net avatar

@BeAware

thanks, boosted.

stupidjim ,
@stupidjim@mastodon.social avatar

@BeAware I'd say it would be great to have a unified fedi-list for usernames, where usernames can only be taken once, especially the verified ones.

Big social media has been doing this without any problem, with billions of people. Mastodon should be able to do so too.

BeAware OP ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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  • stupidjim ,
    @stupidjim@mastodon.social avatar

    @BeAware Understandable that it's annoying, but this is what's happening on every single instance allready, it's just logic. And for the sake of federation I think it would be good to have it fedi-wide.

    I mean for sure you wouldn't like it when you work your follower list and then somebody on another more popular instance duplicates your name and starts to take your fame which you build up with fedi-wide hashtags.

    It'd be just more comfortable for everybody. :)

    LilPecan ,
    @LilPecan@mastodon.social avatar

    @BeAware If anyone is prominent enough that I can Google (duck duck go) their claim to fame, they're already a known criminal or they need my money less than me.

    b_cavello ,
    @b_cavello@mastodon.publicinterest.town avatar

    @BeAware glad that is catching on

    BeAware OP ,
    @BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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  • b_cavello ,
    @b_cavello@mastodon.publicinterest.town avatar
    cascheranno ,
    @cascheranno@hachyderm.io avatar

    @BeAware thx for the alert. Also, FedTalks… I need a feed for good fedTalks.

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