Is impersonation a possible problem in the fediverse? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by ICastFist@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I mean, pretending to be someone in another instance, "stealing" the username, is trivial. I see the more likely targets being instance admins or high profile users. Should we worry somewhat about this?

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[-] sim642@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

That's why instance is part of the username. It's no different than email addresses.

[-] director@some.institute 5 points 1 year ago

Confusing similar domain names are a common thing with email. Micr0soft.com vs Microsoft.com. Same idea could be done with instances.

[-] PonyOfWar@pawb.social 3 points 1 year ago

Setting a display name hides the instance bit. You have to check the URL or profile to see which instance they're on, which people definitely won't do every time. Especially if an impersonator just joins inside a thread mid-conversation, it won't be obvious at all that it's suddenly a different person writing.

[-] ritswd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just like emails, when people write something like ”Amazon Gift Cards” <yolo@yolo.com> in the From field.

[-] skomposzczet@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

His concern is probably that in comments etc. only username is displayed. You have to go to person's profile to discover their instance.

[-] sideone@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Instance is shown if it's different to the one you're on. I can see your instance is vlemmy.net

[-] nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not if they set a display name. Many of the mobile apps are also bad about it even without a display name.

[-] saba 1 points 1 year ago

that's true, but currently people can set their display name to anything, for example, i could set my display name to @sideone@lemmy.world

we could all set that as our display name.

[-] sideone@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, ok

this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023

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