Stolen identities?
While things have quieted down a lot in the blogosphere, the "incident" from several weeks back has left a bad taste in a lot of bloggers' mouths. I'm sure you have an idea of what I'm referring to. While all of us have moved on from that rather disconcerting episode, it is almost regrettable that I have to bring to your attention a recent development that should be nipped in the bud.
And sadly, it may just be the same characters as before.
Several months ago, I introduced a friend and officemate to blogging. You may probably still remember her, her name is Ning. Her blog was named So to Speak..., and it was once located at http://ninggarbo.blogspot.com/.
In the course of maintaining her blog, she apparently made the mistake of entrusting her Blogger account password to another fellow blogger who graciously volunteered to freshen up her template for her. While all was fine at first, she slowly got irked by the fact that this blogger started manipulating her blog even without her permission. She would visit her blog at regular intervals, and she would just be surprised at the fact that her blog would suddenly look different, even though she didn't do anything new with it, and without the other blogger even mentioning that her template had been edited.
This apparently happened more and more often, and Ning, instead of making a fuss about it, lost interest, and just decided to delete her blog and move on to other pursuits.
And for several months after that, whenever anyone attempts to browse her blog, that person is greeted with the "blog not found" page.
Until a few weeks ago that is.
On a whim, she decided to visit her old URL after she noticed that its link was still posted on this blogger's (the one she entrusted her password to) own blog. She was shocked to discover that someone had created a new blog in place of the old one she deleted, and the blog title was her very own name. Here's a screenshot, in case someone gets wise and deletes the blog without everyone seeing it first:
Ning swears that she has totally abandoned her old blog and that she wouldn't even dream of putting it back up, and that it was absolutely not her who resurrected her old blog URL.
Well, apparently someone did.
And the first post was made by someone named "Zio." Ning has no idea who "Zio" is.
Actually, because of that earlier incident involving unwelcome modifications to her blog, Ning has been blogging anonymously since September of this year. To avoid confusing other bloggers, she has given me permission to post her new blog's URL. It's at http://ninggay.blogspot.com/, and is entitled "sEeing liFe tHrough my EyEs..!"
So, not only do we now have "internet trolls" or "tabloid bloggers," now we also have "blog identity thieves."
How could some people sink so low?
She told me the name of the person she gave her password to. I'm not going to mention the name. True or not, I don't think it's appropriate. I can give you three guesses, but if you're in the know, you're probably going to need just one.
Bingo.
This early on, while no damage has been done (yet), everyone should be made aware of this potential new threat in the blogosphere.
And be careful who you give your passwords to.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...
Postscript:
Please read my follow-up post Stolen identities? - Redux.
Comments
What is she up to this time? Stealing an identity is absurd and sick! I can only guess why she did such... Perhaps she wants to have another puppet?
I feel sorry for Ning. I wonder too why Ning didn't change her password instead of terminating her blog. She may have her reasons, unfortunately, the culprit took advantage of the opportunity!
Instead of stealing identity why not come up with an anonymous blog or adapt a pseudonym?
Sybil, the multiple personality - as her pseudonym suits her fine! Don't you think so?
it did pissed me off a little bit at first but with different meta tags it's harmless but misleading to those who have my old link. it's about birds now. i used to placed a lot of chicks photos, nevertheless fowl species just the same
Found ur link pala from Darl. God bless!!
tsk.tsk.how low can they go? that's so pathetic.
Pirates of the Blogs huh!!!
careful everyone!!
Just dropping by....
sobra talagang addicting ang blogging... let us not let blogging rule our world!
bakit ganun we usually know when someone is deceiving us but we choose to ignore it....pero minsan sumusubra na 'eh no malaking babala talaga buti nai-publish mo ito.
I guess that person really likes the blog and probably saw something in there. In my limited knowlede of domain and sub-domain name, once you delete it, it is available to the whole world because the whois registry declared it as open immediately. You see those for sale domain name in the net. The classic case is the name of miss international lara. Immediately after she won the contest, some enterprising guys bought and register her name (as a domain name) in the registry and offer it for sale. With profit of course.
In this case, the guy who is presumed as a thief actually is not a thief. He just grabs it when it is available and no one owns it anymore since the original owner cedes to own it when it is deleted. see the comments of air milikay and j.
He might be another enterprising guy who sees the potential in that blog or probably a spammer or a scammer (who uses different, crazy & unknown names) and who i presume expects that he might be able to harvest the e-mail addresses of the regular visitors or whatever. And that would be a problem.
So next time just be careful. Just like in money laundering course, Know thy customers. In this case Know thy internet friends.
As for the i.PH account, I appreciate the gesture, but there just no way I could use a URL with someone else's name in it, 50$ worth or not. Jangelo told me that it was just not possible to change the URL, so while I appreciated your generosity at the time, you know very well under those circumstances I would not be able to use it. But thanks anyway.
I'm not the type to air only one side of an issue, so your explanation is very welcome here. I hope the others get to read it as well.
Ciao Nao. And Godspeed.