I have a problem here. How can an imposter profile have a SHORTER user ID than your real profile? The length of the user ID goes sequentially. A 6 digit myspace ID was made somewhere before 2004. My ICQ is *****239 I made one shortly after and its *****301. You can tell how old icq's are by how long the numbers are. Some of the first ICQ people actually sold their early numbers. I guess this just means they set up a profile years before you and modifyed it. Myspace should have archived versions of previous pages. They block web.archive.org and I think this is a bad policy. Because someone could block the archives by contacting web.archive.org and having it removed if they can prove its their link directly. And myspace wants to do the work for you.

The key is to keep on complaining. I dont mean making repeated attempts. But when you see a fradulent profile, complain. I JUST learned about this and did my first of a planned run of imposter profile requests. The thing is I KNOW the profiles are fake and a few I am suspitious of. I was going to blog a about this but I wanted to answer some peoples questions on the issue.

1. They cannot give out personal info on the people unless there is a civil or criminal reason.

2. There is a thing called the rules of discovery. This is the civil version of a criminal investigation and you can find out who is behind the profile. Probably only a dummy mail account. eg. yahoo or hotmail. But you can find the IP from hotmail/yahoo, ect. Given you have all the legal recourse to do so.

-Tengri
3. For minor civil issues its probably not worth it. You can try to go for federal civil rico which gives you triple damages and 50% siezures. All you need is repeated violation of a federal law for profit making purposes. And a "network". Usually these bottom feeders work in groups. Roomates, ex bf's, jealous club girls, ect.

4. Myspace has a tool to make the person prove they are who they are by send them a picture with a sign under their face that says "hello myspace". This is a good all around policy to enact along with a probationary period for the person to respond to. It can be faked, but will deal with most fakers.

5. The above example could lead to other civil or criminal "foot in the door" scenarious. Take for example one I will use from my experience. A person has a profile with pictures of a niece or nephew on it. Maybe a naked child picture or a bathtub photo. This could be construed as child porn. I mean why would you have naked pictures of someone else kids on your site? Big danger signal here if the person isnt the childrens father or mother or aunt or uncle. Its questionable all around.

6. Myspace needs to have verifyed profiles. You send a picture of your drivers license and this proves that your who you are. You get a verified profile. Also, if its not you its an instant felony. Identity theft. Why do you have someone else ID? Now you have someone going to jail and not just having their fake myspace taken off.

7. IP verification. All comments, posts, and log ins should show the IP. It should show that the last time you logged in was with such and such IP. This prevents situations where someone else knows your password, like a jealous boyfriend. Impersonation from a lover or roomate, or twin! In certain cases you can have myspace flag an IP and prevent them from accessing your profile even if they have the password.

8. Defenses. Create links offsite to other sites. Photobucket, ect. If you have one social site you might as well have them all. Same goes for IM. Download a all-in-one IM package and set it up to always log in when your online form home and display the email addresses on your page. You will get some wingnuts and spam but its easily dealt with. It makes you a harder target and also people can notify you when if your hacked.

The problem is a lot of people dont want people in real life to know they have a myspace. With 62 people in my friends list I had 800,000,000 (million) people in my network. I also have a unique issue. Most of the private or fake profiles are people IN MY NETWORK. Everyone I know are related in some way.

This is getting to long but another word WATERMARK. Watermark your pictures with your email across the face with transparency. Have this email the one you link your myspace too. Watermark your pictures folks. Its the the 2000s time to up your net savyness.

There are other ways of embedding data in your pictures. All digital cameras do but you have to be CIA or FBI to get the real data. Sony cameras embed data about the owner of the camera in the camera. You'd be suprised the story a picture can tell. The pixelization pattern is like a fingerprint. It matters not if its a photocopy of a fingerprint or the actual finger. It has its own unique feature.

This could be an issue in court of civil and or criminal action is taken. But aside from that, if the person is smart and just does a little playing around. Its just like writing someones name on a bathroom stall (its probably the janitor!).

I hear ya....am really losing faith in MySpace. They don't seem to care how frustraing it can be to go through something like this. They could do something to make it easier on someone.

I have a similar issue. Is there anyway that Myspace can release the private information that was used to create an imposter profile? I had to file an identity theft report and have been trying to resolve this issue for two weeks now. This is ridiculous. I was told that Myspace would be violating a FCC regulation. Is this true? I want and need answers. This is stressing me out.

Hello.

Somebody's set up an imposter profile and MySpace is asking for their "salute" to "verify my identity."

1. How the heck does that work? They don't have any pictures or personal information of mine and I neither have nor want a MySpace page.

2. What right do they have to demand I send them anything, since they didn't verify my identity when that jerk set up the site?

3. Since they can't verify my identity with this "salute," now what do I do?

The friend ID is 282591232

Thanks ahead of time for your help. It's ridiculous that people can get away with this.

Thanks for your help

Hi Maureen,

I was wondering if you heard anything from your myspace contact? Thanks for any help you could provide.

Thanks Maureen,

I received an email reply from myspace stating that it would be removed within 72 hours, which is about 24 hours from now. Still nothing yet.