Associate Programs Newsletter #418
Yuck. Identity theft. I was impersonated on Twitter for months.
It was difficult getting the fake account removed.
Don’t let this happen to you, on Twitter or elsewhere.
CONTENTS:
1. Twits at Twitter finally see sense
2. Who’s using YOUR name on Twitter and other places?
3. Popular articles you may have missed
4. Thought for today: Learning and living
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Twits at Twitter finally see sense
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At first I thought it was funny. Then I got angry.
Someone calling himself “allangardyne” was impersonating me on Twitter and the Twits at Twitter refused to remove the fake account.
I had to complain THREE times before the Twitter imposter was booted off.
At first, I didn’t take Twitter seriously. All that time-consuming chatter put me off. Then I read that Dell had made a $1 million in sales via tweets on Twitter.
So three months ago I tried to set up an account on Twitter.
The trouble was, an anonymous phoney had beaten me to the username “allangardyne”.
He was making amateurish, inane posts about walking his dog, watching his losing football team, and was linking to boring business articles.
I was embarrassed to find the names of some friends among “my” followers. If any of them read those tweets, they must have thought I’d slipped a cog.
I reported the impersonation to Twitter and asked for the fake account to be removed.
I didn’t worry about it. After all, I was in good company, Seth Godin, Vint Cerf, the Dalai Lama, and all sorts of celebrities and sports people have been impersonated on Twitter.
About a week later, Twitter asked me for “more business contact details for our verifications”, which I provided. So far, so good.
But Twitter amazed me by replying…
“In this case there is no violation of our Terms of Service.”
What!?!!
So I complained again, rewording my complaint, explained again that “Allan Gardyne” is a rare name and as far as I know there’s only one of us in affiliate marketing, etc.
Still, no success. The same Twit rejected my complaint.
While I was waiting in vain for the Twits at Twitter to see sense, the fraudster’s impersonation became much more blatant. He was making tweets about articles on our site, AssociatePrograms.com.
He was very clearly pretending to be me.
Not only that, but he was also apparently using a script to follow 7,000 people and gain 7,000 “followers”.
I hated the fact that some ethically challenged, anonymous creep could use my name while doing tricky stuff online and people would think that was MY writing, my actions and my recommendations. Yuck!
I’d spent 13 years building a reputation online and this fraudster was being allowed to mess with it.
So I complained yet again.
This time, I started my complaint…
“(Please DON’T assign this to ….(name of support Twit). He doesn’t understand.)”
Bingo! Success. This time my complaint was handled by someone who cared.
Eventually, the temporary account I’d set up was transferred to MY name, so I now have the Twitter username I wanted.
If you follow me, I promise I won’t send tweets about losing football teams or walking the dogs.
You can follow me here…
https://twitter.com/allangardyne
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2. Who’s using YOUR name on Twitter and other places?
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You may never want to use Twitter, but how would you like it if an imposter set up a fake account using your name?
It’s a nasty feeling.
You don’t want some online hoaxer or script kiddy pretending to be you. If you haven’t done so already, grab your name now before some joker does.
Go to Twitter and type in…
https://twitter/YourName (Replace YourName with your name.)
Go to the most popular social media sites and grab your name there, too. Who knows, you may decide you need those accounts one day. You definitely don’t want someone else controlling them.
While researching fake Twitter accounts – there apparently are a LOT of them – I came across a service called KnowEm, which checks the availability of your name, domain name or brand name on about 120 social media sites.
You just type in your name, and the service scurries around checking all the sites to see if your username is still available. Very clever.
I felt so strongly about being impersonated at Twitter that I used KnowEm’s paid service, which created “allangardyne” accounts at a heap of social media sites.
They do it all manually for you. It takes a few days before you’re signed up with them all.
I used a separate email address just for this, because you receive a little flood of email confirmation notices.
I hate to think how long it would have taken me if I’d had to create all those accounts myself.
Check to see if your name is still available on 120 sites…
https://www.associateprograms.com/check-your-name
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3. Popular articles you may have missed
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Differences between rich and poor affiliate marketers
At last! Our new article writing service
My free Affiliate Program Tutorial
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4. Thought for today: Learning and living
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“Learn as if you were going to live forever and live as if you were going to die tomorrow.” – coach John Wooden.
All the best
Allan Gardyne