Will the Real Daniel Convissor Please Stand Up?

by Daniel Convissor at 2016-02-08 09:45:00

The Joys of Being Impersonated

Here's a fun one... I recently received emails from two tech firms in London. They had a suspicion that the "Daniel Convissor" seeking employment from them was an imposter. The guy put some of my work on his resume. So, yes, they're a fraud.

The fool is using "danielconvissor@gmail.com" to email folks. On January 12th, I filled out Google's Abuse Form. Ten days later, I got another report, so filled out the form with that information. As of Noon on February 1st, the email account is still active.

I sent an email to someone I know who works for The Borg. They found a help page which says "Gmail is unable to participate in mediations involving third parties regarding impersonation." So much for security.

The fraudster is also using the "danny.conv" Skype account. I sent a GPG signed email to Skype detailing the problem. That got an autoreply saying signature.asc doesn't have an allowed file name extension. Sigh. Then they replied that I should use the website to report abuse. So I did. To which they replied with steps on how to report about a hijacked account. Double sigh.

I finally got someone to say that people should use one's Skype client as follows. View the contacts list (or search for a new contact) select the problematic account and use the "block" option. In the resulting popup, check the "report abuse" checkbox and then submit the form. "If the person is also reported by other Skype users too, his account will be automatically blocked once the number of reports reaches the limit."

So Skype deflects responsibility, but at least they have something.

For the record, I don't have a Gmail account and never will. My email is "danielc@analysisandsolutions.com". My Skype user name is "danielconvissor". If you're ever in doubt, my GPG key is 8FFE1FFC.

Tags: security

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