A suggestion to introduce a rule prohibiting impersonation

[hosemary]

Please check the post history of Bastketsrus. (You can click here to see the archived version of Bastketsrus' post history, if their posts have been deleted)

The user posts on different topics as if they are the owner of the projects or their representative on the forum.
I think the user deserves a ban for what they are doing, but the forum has no rules against impersonation through posts and the only thing we can do now is left them negative feedback. I am proposing to add a rule prohibiting impersonation, so that users like Bastketsrus can be banned.


Currently, we have a rule prohibiting impersonation through avatars and I think that's not enough.

[Churchillvv]

It seems to me more like a farm account than impersonation as you suggest because from my view on the profile, the user is found dropping two lines post while quoting the whole do a thread no matter how lengthy it is and the same few words repeats like it’s his pattern.

So in my opinion that must be a way to keep the account active for a while. Sure someone else will notice this too.

[Hazink]

It seems to me more like a farm account than impersonation as you suggest because from my view on the profile, the user is found dropping two lines post while quoting the whole do a thread no matter how lengthy it is and the same few words repeats like it’s his pattern.

This is not a case of account farming buddy, it's a clear impersonation pattern. This is just like the regular scam we see on social media where someone will come into the comment section and try to talk as if they are or part of the original project owners.

The dude might have not made any move to scam anyone, but it's obvious that pattern of going from one casino thread to another presenting their self as if he's addressing a member like the casino representative is a way to gain some kind of recognition before they can pull any type of scam attempt using that profile

[Joy- maker]

I have gone through the post history of Bastketsrus all what I saw there was impersonations, pretending to be the presentative or partner of all those casinos he or she comment on their ANN threads which is very bad, because this act of pretending to be those casinos representative or partner is with a motive, to mislead other users here into believing that he or she are those casinos representative or partner he or she is impersonating, and after that what come next is to scam those who will fall prey to the trap he or she is setting.

And as for the aspect of adding the impersonation rule to the existing forum rules, IMO it is a good suggestion.

[Ruttoshi]

Someone like Bastketsrus might have plans to scam someone that is having issues with any of those casinos especially, newbies who are not familiar with who is the casino representative here in the forum if not why is he impersonating as the casinos representatives in all his replies. It shows that he's dishonest and not to be trusted. Such a member deserves to be ban from the forum to prevent him from achieving is target here and safe forum members from falling victim to him.

[Charles-Tim]

This forum will not do that because they want to stay out of anything that is scam. They do not want to be blamed for anyone that get scammed on this forum. Because of that, I do not think scam can be moderated.

The best that we can do is to tag any user that do such thing. And if confirmed the person is impersonation, a flag can be created for such a person.

[Z-tight]

I don't think i have seen another user do this, posting in multiple topics pretending to be their representative. What exactly is their play here? Could probably be to get a newbie to send them a pm of a complaint or something, that has to be it, otherwise i don't see the sense in this and it should be categorized as useless spam

However, i don't think this is a big problem, neither is a rule about it important. It should be easy for anyone to verify who is a true representative of a project or simply ignore the rep in this forum and chat the support in the official website of the service.

[LoyceV]

I don't think we'll get such a rule. Just like scams aren't moderated because the burden of proof and potential bias will be on Mods, impersonation has the same problem. Or even worse: my name isn't really Loyce Valenzuela, and when I searched for it, it looks like there's someone else with that name. I wouldn't want to be banned for impersonating someone with my nickname.

[NotATether]

I don't think we'll get such a rule. Just like scams aren't moderated because the burden of proof and potential bias will be on Mods, impersonation has the same problem. Or even worse: my name isn't really Loyce Valenzuela, and when I searched for it, it looks like there's someone else with that name. I wouldn't want to be banned for impersonating someone with my nickname.

Another thing is that it could lead to account bans of people who are parodying someone else's username. Last time I checked, there were at least 10 clones of theymos. (Though I am aware that some of those accounts had been used for phishing.) People should not be able to ban others just because they share a similar username.

[hosemary]

I don't think we'll get such a rule. Just like scams aren't moderated because the burden of proof and potential bias will be on Mods, impersonation has the same problem. Or even worse: my name isn't really Loyce Valenzuela, and when I searched for it, it looks like there's someone else with that name. I wouldn't want to be banned for impersonating someone with my nickname.

I understand this and it even came to my mind when I was creating this topic.

But we already have rule number 31 which is about impersonation via avatars.
According to rule number 31, if you use your real photo as your avatar, I download that image and use that as my avatar, I will be banned.

This means that if I use my avatar to claim that I am LoyceV, I will be banned, but if I make a post and say "I am LoyceV", I won't be banned.
Note that I'm not just saying my name is LoyceV. I am saying I am alt account of LoyceV.

[Mrbluntzy]

This kind of attitude is commonly displayed on telegrams groups of some successful project (as I have observed). If detected, the real admin on the group will kick out the user and prevent them from joining the group again because the intentions of this persons is to act like they are the real support or that they are part of the project, then if a customer ask a question about the problem they are facing, they will either DM the person or the person could even DM after reading through their comments thinking they are really part of the project.

This user might not only be doing this so that newbies could DM him, but he could also be DMing newbies, showing a link of his comments to the newbie and tell them that he is in charge of the project. Multiple red tags from different DTs with enough informative feedbacks on the tag should be able to tell people that the person is an impersonator. I also think that if such users has been reported multiple times to moderators and yet they don't stop, it should lead to banning.

[Anthony Bill]

Your observation is excellent guy, but there is no such  forum rule that is against what they are doing and you have said it already. Do you want the management to add rule that will serve as a punishment to any users that will involve in this kind of behavior? Don't forget that they know that there is no rules against it, that is why they are doing what they are doing.  If forum management can approve rule against impersonation, it will eliminate this behavior from all section in the forum.

[KingsDen]

It seems that we still do not understand how the forum works.
Op, the forum do not need a rule against impersonation for these two reasons;

• Moderating it will be difficult, just like moderating scam. It will take mods extra work to discover if the person is truly impersonating or not before they could decide.
• If someone is banned for impersonation, they could quickly make another account and continue to impersonate.

Besides, those who are likely to impersonate are low rank accounts of little/no value. It wouldn't be difficult for them to make 5 accounts a day.

[JeromeTash]

I think I have seen cases of admins, mods, and other old forum members being impersonated by newbie accounts before, but it mostly ended with them getting tagged, and I think the forum administration is still comfortable in that essence. The major motive of impersonation is probably to scam or deception and with the forum avoiding moderating scam as much as possible, I guess what works against such account will be negative tags and trust flags from DT members.

[Dunamisx]

The best thing to do with such user is to tag leaving a review that best explain what they do, because i don't think the forum may accept to add such as part of the rules, since scam is not moderated as many have already commented, we are the ones to always make sure we cross check with whom and on what ground we related to anyone form the forum, knowing that anything we see or trust is at our own risk, had it been it is allowed, some would have even replicated our username and claimed us.

[Perfectbaby]

I don't think we'll get such a rule. Just like scams aren't moderated because the burden of proof and potential bias will be on Mods, impersonation has the same problem. Or even worse: my name isn't really Loyce Valenzuela, and when I searched for it, it looks like there's someone else with that name. I wouldn't want to be banned for impersonating someone with my nickname.

Another thing is that it could lead to account bans of people who are parodying someone else's username. Last time I checked, there were at least 10 clones of theymos. (Though I am aware that some of those accounts had been used for phishing.) People should not be able to ban others just because they share a similar username.

That is true, and someone can actually love the next person username and make account with either similar names but that doesn't mean such person is impersonating or trying to scam others with same username, and of course there are people who coincidentally has similar username and either there could be a slight change by numbers or special characters. However, I am also against anyone who purposely come openly to impersonate someone or claim to be a project owner while such person are not, there should be a penalty for such person so that others could learn from there and stop such acts.

[joker_josue]

This means that if I use my avatar to claim that I am LoyceV, I will be banned, but if I make a post and say "I am LoyceV", I won't be banned.
Note that I'm not just saying my name is LoyceV. I am saying I am alt account of LoyceV.

But for these cases, we don't need to create a rule. The forum rules end up considering this action as a penalty.

Look, whoever claims to be an alternative account for LoyceV ^{(LoyceV is our guinea pig)} will have the objective of doing something illegal.

So if you post links that lead to schemes - rule 6, 11.
If you plagiarize you will be penalized.
In addition, the real LoyceV will be able to take action against this imitation.

In the end, anyone who does this ends up suffering the consequences of their actions, because they will have broken many other rules.
No more rules are needed for this.

[SuperBitMan]

I have gone through the post history of Bastketsrus all what I saw there was impersonations, pretending to be the presentative or partner of all those casinos he or she comment on their ANN threads which is very bad, because this act of pretending to be those casinos representative or partner is with a motive, to mislead other users here into believing that he or she are those casinos representative or partner he or she is impersonating, and after that what come next is to scam those who will fall prey to the trap he or she is setting.

And as for the aspect of adding the impersonation rule to the existing forum rules, IMO it is a good suggestion.

Bastketsrus is actually claiming to be members of those casino and then he will message someone or someone may message him thinking his part of the casino team and through that he scam the person, I think this is the technique he's trying to use here in the forum and he should be ban and anyone that is doing this also when discovered should be ban because with this strategy they can use it to scam a lot of people that opportunity shouldn't be given to people in this forum.

Concerning baning impersonators it is a good idea however it should be that the impersonator is caught in the act of impersonation just like Bastketsrus.
If someone is answering similar name with someone here in this forum I don't think he should be ban for impersonation because the names we are even answering here is not our real name is just nicknames we love and someone else may even be answering it before us.
But if the forum management sees it as something very necessary then they shouldn't allow someone register with a similar name to someone else name here in the forum.

[lovesmayfamilis]

This user has been behaving rather strangely on the forum for quite some time. Here's how I see it: it's a bot, initially repeating human responses, slightly changing the wording, but the message remained the same. Furthermore, I have dozens of reports of posting multiple posts. Then, in the AI ​​thread, he was discovered and marked as an AI spammer. Now, after being discovered, he's completely lost the point of pretending to be a bot, and yesterday he was writing dozens of posts AI pretending to be a member of one company or another. The moderators promptly delete all his posts, so I don't think one idiot should cause a stir that would change the forum rules.

[dkbit98]

Currently, we have a rule prohibiting impersonation through avatars and I think that's not enough.

I don't like this idea.
Even this rule of avatar impersonation is not being enforced in reality, as long as I can remember, and we have many members who are wearing the same avatars.
As much as I don't like having a bunch of fake satoshi members from time to time, we can't really stop them from doing that.
Anyone who tries impersonating would probably get a negative feedback, so it's not worth it for him.