Saturday, April 23, 2022

Someone is impersonating me on Facebook

This (https://www.facebook.com/ron.garret.54/) is my profile on Facebook.

This (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080342422733) is not my profile.  It is someone trying to impersonate me.   Apparently, at least six people I know have already fallen for this ruse.

I've submitted a DMCA takedown request on the grounds that this person is violating my copyright on my avatar image, but it is sheer luck that this came to my attention at all.  Someone who received a friend request from the imposter got suspicious and contacted me directly.  Otherwise, this person could have been impersonating me for a long, long time and I would never have known until they got some sensitive information out of one of my acquaintances and used it to hack into my bank account or something like that.

For the record: I never use my Facebook account, and this is one of the many, many reasons why.  If you are getting a message from me through Facebook it is almost certainly fraudulent.

[UPDATE] Clicking on the fraudulent link now results in a page that says "This content isn't available right now."  So I'm guessing this has been dealt with.  But I'm also guessing that trying to prevent this from happening again could turn into a very frustrating game of whack-a-mole.

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