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Identity theft in news comments

Bob2002

ULTIMATE Member
Isn't about time there was some form of user verification for news comments? For the third time/news item the same moron is impersonating my username(his writing style seems familiar so I suspect he's been posting to the news comments regularly in the past). Why should I have my reputation potentially sullied simply because the comments system apparently has zero protection against abuse?

From now on I will not be posting to news comments - except to point out that the real Bob2002 only posts in the forum.


What steps do you intend to take to stop this abuse of site users? :hrmph:

EDIT:

Some relevant news articles/comments -

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ication-for-adult-porn-websites.html#comments

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...er-complaints-says-theyre-awful.html#comments
 
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I get pretty annoyed with websites that require registration to post comments but I would like to see the ability to, in addition to guest comments, comment as a "logged in user" - so you can validate you are the real bob2000000 rather than someone just typing the name :D

Tom - www.mouselike.org
 
I get pretty annoyed with websites that require registration to post comments but I would like to see the ability to, in addition to guest comments, comment as a "logged in user" - so you can validate you are the real bob2000000 rather than someone just typing the name

Anonymous posting was common on forums during the early days of the Internet, the only high profile site I visit that still allows anonymous posting is Slashdot but all anonymous users get the name "Anonymous Coward". Anonymous posting is basically dead on major sites because there is always some idiot who will abuse it - as in this case. It's time ISPreview news comments followed suit. :shrug:
 
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to be honest, ld like to see the front page hooked into the user database so it draws information from our accounts to verify who we are.. tho with regards to forcing registration, l believe it would be much more interesting to still allow anon posting but they can only use their registered username if they have registered and not someone elses, if that makes sense.
 
The problem right now is that some of my custom tricks have virtually stopped comment spam from robots dead, reducing it from thousands of posts a month to about 4-6. The work load and CPU drain for dealing with that before was too expensive for me.

By comparison all of the comment plugin systems I've tried (Discqus etc.) have big flaws, restrictive customisation and also still require heavy spam management (we simply cannot afford the latter). I do plan to adopt something better in the future (expect social media integration with fb, twitter etc.) but it won't be top of my to-do list for awhile due to more important work.

In the meantime.. ultimately nobody has ownership of an identify in anonymous comments and it is entirely your choice whether or not to participate in or even read them. It's worth pointing out that lots of sites still allow anonymous commenting (those that don't will also still get trolled by people re-registering on auto freemail accounts) and I don't want to kill that off completely, but we will look at something to help give members a clear identity.

As for your issue Bob, I'm just in a taxi on the M3 coming back from a holiday where the forum wasn't accessible to me due to my own spam blocks :). But I'll take a look as soon as my work backlog is cleared in a day or so.
 
As for your issue Bob, I'm just in a taxi on the M3 coming back from a holiday where the forum wasn't accessible to me due to my own spam blocks :). But I'll take a look as soon as my work backlog is cleared in a day or so.


Yes, you may as well delete the PM I sent you it is essentially a rehash of my opening post - thanks for cleaning up the linked news comments.

I started this thread because of consistent identity theft/trolling over a number of news submissions - it apparently started with someone impersonating "adslmax"(who has now changed his name to "adslmax Real") and then moved onto me. Recently Captain Cretin has posted to the news submissions and stated that in my case it was part joke/part accident - not so funny if you have to monitor all replies, to every news submission, for an abusive or defamatory remark in order to reply and state it was made by an imposter.

Oddly Bob2002 is not my real name, it would have been even less funny if people who do use their real names had been impersonated ... much less funny.

I suppose I will go back to commenting on news now that the culprit has apparently come clean, but I still consider anonymous comments an accident waiting to happen. :hrmph:
 
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Hi Bob, as I said, I originally posted a couple of "joke" comments using your name in response to your complaint about someone else using it - sorry - I thought they were funny. The last one was a complete mistake, I had forgotten to reset the name before posting.

For some reason very few people want to steal my name, the only other Captain Cretin I have come across was on a Singapore Ex-Pat forum.

I HAVE had thousands of people lacking any sense of humour - try to warn me that the name means stupid.
 
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