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

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Some other projects in the fediverse have a verification mechanism in place.

I personally like Mastodon's: if you add on your profile a link to a webpage that itself links to your profile, Mastodon will show a green checkmark next to the link: https://joinmastodon.org/verification

So you can verify your profile by linking to a webpage you own or testifies your account's authenticity (ie. your blog, your author page of the publication your write for, etc.)

Hopefully other projects (including Lemmy) will take inspiration from this process to limit impersonations.