this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I guess the openness of the registration process and instance creation would invite this low effort type of attack. I also bumped in a post that reported community name squating, where accounts were creating empty communities with popular subreddit names in order to sell them later on I guess? I just don't see the actual benefit of it, it seems more of an oppurtinistic play more than anything else.
Community name squatting doesn't make sense at all because different instances can have communities with the same name. So unless they manage to create one on all of the big instances, that's completely useless.
That's what it seems like to me too. Plus there is nothing stopping admins of instances transferring ownership in these situations.
Exactly. Federated services seem to be much more resilient against abuse by design.
When @'ing or pinging someone by username, the auto complete will suggest matching users from across federated instances. So typo squatting could be a thing, or user impersonation. But it'd be rather transparent when it occurs, but some could still fall for such tactics, just like with email spam or phishing scams.
That’s a problem for sure. And if someone has a display name, someone else can create a user with the same avatar and display name on another instance, and pretend to be them.
Do you think we should ~~sell~~show little blue checkmarks for users from your same home instance? 😆
That said, it might be nice for users to be able to tag others (privately viewable only by the tag author) to lable users they've veted before, sort of like RES. Users could keep track who is authentic from a prior interaction, like friends, but also who is just a troll, etc. But perhaps that better left user or client side customizations.