The Internet can be a scary place. There’s certainly no shortage of junk and creepy, evil people. And it seems every day there’s a new threat to evade. No site or service is immune, unfortunately. And Medium is no exception. Right now, it looks like there’s a rash of people impersonating Medium authors in order to send spam. These are called impersonation spam attacks.
Not cool.
Impersonation spam attacks are nothing new.
It’s not uncommon for someone to pretend to be someone else to gain instant credibility to fool someone into clicking a link or performing some other action. It happens all the time on Facebook. Occasionally I’ll get a friend request from someone impersonating one of my friends. But the person on the other side of the screen isn’t my friend but rather a scammer. Not cool.
I work in IT. Occasionally a client will receive an email from someone claiming to be a colleague or boss asking for the client to click on a link or take some sort of action – like buying a bunch of gift cards. Of course those requests aren’t legit, but lots of people fall for them because they think that someone they trust is truly behind the request.
Some people figure that if they can pretend to be someone famous or familiar, they can fool someone. It’s lame. It’s slimy. But it’s common.
What exactly is happening on Medium?
On July 27th, Medium author Kristina God wrote her story titled “Warning! Someone Stole My Identity On Medium” to alert everyone to the fact that someone had been pretending to be her in order to leave comments promoting a crypto website.
Someone had set up another account and copied her name, bio, and even her profile picture and was using that account to post spam comments. Not cool. In other words, someone impersonates another person to spam people in hopes that the recognizability of the person being impersonated will convince someone to click on a spam link or something of that nature.
While I would like to think this is the first time something like this has happened, I doubt very much that it is. And if it can happen to Kristina, it probably could happen to just about anyone. And that’s scary.
Impersonation spam attacks can damage someone’s reputation.
If someone can steal my name, bio and picture and pose as me in order to post spam, what harm will that do to my reputation and business? Even though it’s not me posting that junk, it’s hard to tell that it isn’t on first glance and without diving a bit deeper. Something needs to be done about this.
If someone saw someone pretending to be Kristina God posting about crypto and didn’t dive in to see that it wasn’t actually her posting those comments, what might they conclude? That she was, in fact, posting those comments?
They might conclude, possibly, that her account had been compromised. Or they might assume that it was in fact her posting that junk, damaging her reputation and her brand.
And that’s definitely not okay.
In online business, reputation is hugely important. As an author, I don’t want to be known as someone who promotes junk or spams other people. Of course not. I want to be known for providing what I hope is valuable information and helpful content that makes other peoples’ lives a bit better. If someone steals my identity to promote junk, that’s harmful to my reputation, and something needs to be done about it.
After all, a good reputation can be damaged in much less time than it takes to build.
What can Medium do to prevent impersonation spam attacks?
Kristina rightly alerted Medium’s support so they could deal with the impersonator, and the offending account has been suspended. I’m very glad to hear that.
But what can Medium do to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future? Unfortunately, on the Internet, it’s so easy to be mostly anonymous, hiding behind a keyboard and screen. And there’s only so much a website can do to prevent someone from pretending to be another user.
Still, I agree with Kristina that something needs to be done. On some platforms, there’s a “verified” badge or checkmark for certain accounts that help people to know that a given account is legitimate or “official” and not some knockoff. This is especially important for individuals or companies whose names are likely to be stolen and used to promote spam.
Is that what we need on Medium? Would that help to stem the tide of impersonation spam attacks or make would-be scammers think twice? Maybe. Maybe not.
But in my estimation, it’s certainly better than nothing.
How could Medium verify who is and who isn’t a real person? And should this verification be done for all accounts or only those in the Medium Partner Program?
As I’m not in charge at Medium and don’t claim to have all the answers, I don’t know. But whatever the answer is, I hope that Medium is working on something. And maybe, with enough asking from the community, they’ll come up with a long term solution that protects the identity of authors and the credibility of Medium as whole.
Medium is still a great place to write.
Even if Medium doesn’t do anything long term to prevent impersonation spam attacks, I still believe it’s a great place to write. I love the community, and I think the Medium Partner Program is a great way to earn some money for writing.
Though it isn’t perfect, I do recommend joining Medium and reading from other authors there. On Side Hustle Road, I’ll continue to write about my experiences with the platform and hopefully encourage others to check it out.
It’s important to remember that these kinds of issues are not unique to Medium, and there’s really only so much that Medium can do to prevent them. I do believe they are and will try and that they are committed to a safe and secure environment for readers and writers alike.