This is hardly a new situation but I was wondering if anyone else has any thoughts about the matter or additional protective measures besides the few I have already thought of...
People impersonating vendors with a quality reputation, it certainly occurs in a number of formats or forums where there are no safeguards in place to ensure that who you think you're talking to is who you're actually talking to.
I was reminded of this tonight when I saw someone with an AOL Screenname DonHamperReptile, was this Don Hamper? I have no idea, I don't know the man personally and had no way of knowing if it was or not, I do know that Don uses the e-mail
hamper@pythons.com but I have no idea if he uses AOL or not... The person using that name was trying to sell herps. If it was actually Don then, hey, no problems but if it was not then there could have potentially been serious reprecussions if anyone had been interested in any of the animals he said were avaliable (not identical to the avaliability list on Mr. Hamper's web-site but again, that doesn't automatically mean anything). There was a Bobclarkreptile in the same chat a few days earlier which I am fairly certain was not Bob as it was unable to list the nomenclature for a Burm when asked... Also looking to sell reptiles that the individual behind it probably didn't have.
I'm sure a few of those reading this can remember back before Kingsnake required a verified e-mail to register a name and there were forty Bob Clarks fighting with sixty Dave or Traci Barkers and none of them were real, causing problems for the actual individuals who's names were being lifted.
Being ripped off by a person under the guise of someone else with no more specific information on who was behind it is bound to only come back on the person who was impersonated, harming their reputation and causing rumors and dissatisfied potential customers.
These actions of attempted identity theft are along the same lines as picture theft but it seems that the avaliable means of recourse are a bit harder to get to, a quick e-mail to a person's ISP will get a picture removed but reporting identity fraud is a much more difficult and hard to prove, process as I understand it.
Someone actually attempted to impersonate me at one point when I was known publicly to have been out of town and away from my computer, offering radiated torts for sale to people who know me personally until they were laughed into ambiguity (I very very rarely offer animals up for sale and I really don't like torts and I'm not generally quiet about it). They attempted this by transposing a lower case L in a screenname into an upper case i, it would have been sufficient to fool people who didn't know me that they were being confronted by a legitimate dealer (I'm not even anything close to a "Name" but it just goes to show it can happen to anyone).
So, as a buyer, outside of verifying contact information through as many potential sources as possible and doing buisness through only verifiable e-mail addresses or contact numbers, what potential protection would a consumer with less experience at identifying BS or with a less developed sense of how a legitimate dealer tends to behave go about ensuring that they are protected from this sort of nonsense?
As an individual who someone has attempted to impersonate, what preliminary steps can be taken to stop individuals who attempt this sort of nonsense?
As a bit of a minor additional and slightly related issue, what does someone do if there is an individual who legitimatly has the same name commiting acts that are... less than desireable? An easy example, although both great guys and honest buisnessmen would be Kevin Dunn from Dragons Den and Kevin Dunne from Radical Reptiles (I hope I got the E in the right place, if I didn't I apologize)... I really feel for the poor guy who wants to do honest buisness but happens to be named Jesse Underhill.
Any thoughts are welcome, it's not really a specific problem for me personally but I've seen a great number of people who attempt identity theft and I was wondering how some of those impersonated individuals dealt with it.