A few things happened on Twitter lately – alright, a LOT of things happen on Twitter daily – but these two seem to stick out for me. First, Twitter phishing attacks. Second, I’ve noticed many accounts generated using the same person’s name just in different formats like “lynette_chandler”, “lynette-chandler” stuff like that. While I think those users are most likely using some kind of automated system in the hopes of gaming and spamming their followers, I can’t be 100% sure because…

Anyone can register themselves using any name can’t they? Granted, they won’t be able to use my Twitter profile since I’m occupying it, but who’s to say someone else can’t come along to create another account with my name on it? They can even lift my pictures right from my own profile or other web pages. I don’t think that has happened yet and I would like to think whoever would do so happens to share the same name which would be great and fun twittering with each other.

You could argue that it is the same as creating an email account with someone else’s name. But the more I think about it, that’s not quite the same. With emails if the person uses my alias to spam there’s always a record in the headers. Twitter probably keeps some kind of log and if push comes to shove, there may be ways to demand that information if defamation becomes really bad. But the damage if any was intended, would usually be done.

Also, clients know my regular email address. When I email them personally or on the list it’s always using a domain name I own. That makes impersonation a little harder.

I don’t think this is a solveable issue nor something we want ‘solved’ what a pain it would be to require real proof just to set up an account. What I’ll be doing is, be myself, update regularly enough, make sure clients especially know my real ID by promoting it regularly and just not sweat it too much.