What Should You Do If Someone Tries To Impersonate You Online

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What Should You Do If Someone Tries To
Impersonate You Online?
Cybercrimes are always buzzing around with
dangerous effects on various aspects.
Impersonating someone is a deadly form of online
crime that has hazardous effects similar to
hacking. Impersonating someone is to play, act or
pretend to be someone else using someones
actual identity. It is not exactly hacking or
breaking into your account it covers an entire
plan to set up a completely different account
similar to your name with your existing display
picture. Why would someone want to be you? There
is a greater risk involved than you think! What
should you do when someone tries to impersonate
you online? Lets have a closer insight! How
Can Someone Impersonate You? The entire goal
behind impersonating someone is desire and greed.
There are many ways where the masked guy can
impersonate you for all the negative reasons like
gaining a monetary benefit or harming the
reputation of your organization or involving you
in some cyberbullying/crimes. They can take place
in ways broadly as
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• Social media Impersonation.
• Masking a website as you own.
• There are other ways too including
  counterfeiting, phishing, fake news, etc. The
  people who are involved in such activities are
  dangerous and can do a lot of harm to your
  online identity.
• Related Online reputation management in times of
  increased cyberbullying and cyber
• offenses
• Social Media Impersonation
• Have you seen that a film actor has several
  accounts under his name with the same display
  picture on social media platforms? Thanks to the
  feature of blue tick or verification mark that
  allows us to differentiate between the real and
  the impersonated one on Instagram and Facebook.
  Even then, many people fail to recognize and
  differentiate between the two accounts due to a
  lack of awareness. And what happens when someone
  not of blue tick is being impersonated?
• It doesnt mean someone hacked or took control of
  your account. It is the making of the look-alike
  account, stealing information from the real
  account while re-posting your pictures, stories,
  events, and whereabouts.
• Here are some steps you can take for protecting
  yourself from an impersonator
• Report the account
• There are options in every social media platform
  to report a fake account. You can report the
  account that is impersonating you or you can
  report it on behalf of someone else. There is a
  simple process on every social media website for
  reporting fraud, do that and wait for your
  report to be approved.
• Post about the fraud

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Report all thefts and libel content Gather all
the information of recent libels or thefts that
you know about. Ask your friends and followers
to report any kind of monetary losses they
suffered because of your fake account. Contact
the customer support on the social media
platform. Reach out to the banks for reporting
the bank details and receipts of the money lost
if you have them. Sometimes they can flag the
recipients accounts or reverse the
transactions. Dont fall for emotional
stories The impersonator may ask for money to
delete your account or might trap you by telling
a sad story that can make you guilty enough to
make you help him. The professional fraudsters
generally shine on executing strategies to
finally make you feel pity for them and brush
off their crimes. They are most commonly repeat
offenders. Be careful not to get drawn towards
their emotional traps. Related What should be
your social media strategy for the new normal
times? Website Impersonation Websites are cloned
for several outrageous and sinful reasons. This
is done because of competition, personal
grudges, to take advantage, or to defame.
Whatever may be the evil intention behind this,
the consequences might be dreadful to you and
your reputation. The fraudsters may steal your
logo, designs, and even the intellectual
properties of your original website. They can
also create similar websites with a slight
difference in logo and designs with similar
products and services to take down your
business. While these dramas will be
inescapable, word-to-word mimicking of your
website may require you to take some steps to
take them down. Send a cease and desist letter
to the masked person There are various templates
available online for this letter. This is a
message sent to the fraudster to warn him and
ask him to stop the activity that he is doing and
the legal risk involved in it. Report the
website to the respective web host Certain tools
help detect the web hosting provider of a
particular website. Report them about the fraud
and ask them to run an investigation against the
website.
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There are various other ways to deal with such
kinds of situations. Many legal firms can handle
frauds with professional skills but they are not
very well recommended. Related How to perform
an online vulnerability assessment of your
website? Why is it important? This Is Not The
End! The Internet surely is a boon for mankind,
yet, is a warehouse of fraudsters and loopholes.
There are many fishy tricks out there that
resemble and are associated with impersonation.
When there is a hefty amount of money, a large
chunk of shares, crypto, power, and influence is
involved, there will be fraudsters waiting to
siphon money or compromise data. Some popular
cybercrimes include Phishing The scammer
impersonates a brand or one of its employees to
seek out personal and sensitive customer details
like pins and passwords, security numbers, and
bank details. This not only does harm to the
image of the brand itself, but it also sometimes
causes huge financial losses to the customers
and potential buyers. There are cases of
phishing that involve some of the greatest scams
in history. Counterfeiting Some certain pages
and accounts are exclusively made to sell fake
and inappropriate products to the potential
consumers of the big brands. These frauds occur
mostly in the beauty, fashion, and luxury
industries. They set up big advertising campaigns
attracting the target audience of the big and
reputed brands and selling them adulterated and
look-alike products at a cheaper price. Related
Ways to protect yourself from the rising rate of
cybercrimes amidst the pandemic Impersonation
Vs. Fan page It is not uncommon to see around
several pages documenting a politician, actor,
influencer, or news channel. But there is a clear
thread separating a fan page from a fake
account. A fan page is exclusively a community
for the fans to show their love for the person.
It is not illegal to form a fan page until the
admin asks for money and favors impersonating
someone or tries to defame using false claims,
events, and fake news. It is quite luring to
take a step ahead to reap the loyalty and
applause of thousands of followers.
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How Can You Prevent Your Information From Getting
Impersonated? There is an increase in the wave of
impersonating accounts and accusations. You can
only take the steps and actions to cease the
person who is impersonating you if you are
miserable enough to become its victim.

• Here are a few informative guidelines that you
  should be aware of
• The person impersonating you must be someone who
  follows you. They need information from your
  personal life to impersonate you. Verify your
  friends and followers list and block, unfriend,
  or unfollow someone who is a stranger.
• Search the social media websites with your social
  media account name and see how many similar
  accounts you can find out. See if any of them are
  impersonating you.
• Take screenshots of the imposter account in case
  you found out and try to track down any
  unethical deeds done by the account, this will
  help you to handle the situation legally.
• Send out warnings to all your contacts and
  followers to keep your reputation intact if your
  account is compromised.
• Get business accounts or influencers accounts
  verified with the blue tick.
• Set the privacy settings of your account to
  prevent people from impersonating you.
• Conclusion
• You cannot irradiate the concept of
  impersonation. With law enforcement and social
  media policies becoming stricter and tougher, it
  is difficult to impersonate someone so easily.
  Many of the sites require identity proof before
  making an account with them. You have to be
  careful while putting your personal or
  professional information out there.

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