Stealing A Domain With Your Name On It?
I wrote about a podcast domain that was hijacked some time ago by a guy who wanted to “own the world”.
I decided to allow the domain jbschirtzinger.com to expire awhile ago due to AI slurping up content. As you can see, though, the domain exists and the blog as it existed in around 2023 appears to be online. It is an impostor posing as me, and then pulling my old content to make it appear that I wrote some stuff I haven’t. This blog you are currently reading is the original material.
Here is where the “injected content” begins:
See all that “Nigerian Crypto Stuff?” Yeah, I didn’t write any of that, and it is weird that someone decided to duplicate my blog after purchasing the domain name to make it look like I did.
Reporting It
I reported the issues to the domain registrar, but they only sent some form email back and never did anything. I reported it to ICANN and submitted the clear evidence that someone is posing as me, and then sometime like a month later they asked for some additional info that was really irrelevant to the problem and only gave like a week to respond to their request before auto-closing the case. Since I hadn’t heard from them in over a month, I wasn’t on the lookout for their email. You can, of course, re-open the case, but then, if it is that badly broken in terms of a reporting system, I highly doubt they will be effective in addressing the matter. ICANN wanted the form letter that the registrar sent back as proof that the registrar was contacted, apparently. Regardless, if someone is posing as you and the evidence is clear, it shouldn’t really matter who contacts whom about the issue.
An Analogy
An analogy would be that you come into a crime scene and you can see someone is sprawled out on the floor and that a witness there is telling you the person was shot. You listen to the witness, but you ask them whether or not they filed a police report at their local police station. The person says they have but nothing was done. You ask them for a copy of the report, but you do not receive it right then and there. You tell them that the case is auto-closed then but you can re-open it anytime in the future. Oh yeah, you also just so happen to work with the Federal Branch of criminal investigation.
Obviously, if the power isn’t being used locally, you aren’t, at the Federal level, absolved from doing anything about what was reported. It’s ridiculous to think you would be. Hemming and hawing over some minor procedural element while someone is shot on the floor is definitely not in the spirit of the law…