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Someone is pretending to be me

connortumbleson.com

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Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#161

Post by madrox »

About 12 years ago, I attended a barcamp (blast from the past) where someone gave an SEO talk about how to hack search and adwords to provide no value but capture eyeballs and trick people into clicking on things to make money. I recall many references to a wider community they were a part of that did this, traded tips and tricks, and generally evolved their trade of grifting at scale.

I can't help but feel there's a whole community of people out there with few morals who are trading tips on how to set up scams like this. The "web of lies" seems so deep and complicated I can't imagine this whole thing was built in a vacuum by one person.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#162

Post by AlwaysRock »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #37

This story is much more fun when you come at it from the interviewer's position. You've been doing interviews every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation. You're about to repeat the experience for the 18th time and you're 100% on autopilot. But suddenly you're in a spy thriller. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened. Is it a good legal/corporate decis…

You know that interviewer was shitting themselves when og Conor unmuted and said wtf mate.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#163

Post by bmsleight_ »

blastwind wrote: post #125

Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site. This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and interviewing every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation (sorry to top comment for "impersonating" your comment style). My days are deteriorating from a colorful sphere down to two points. In fact, down to two po…

Andrew - you the sort of person I would love to have on my team. Alas I more hardware engineering than software. I hope the community here can give you some good leads and tips.

Karma should be that ethics works.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#164

Post by CobrastanJorji »

AyyWS wrote: post #136
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining is not the goal. Say you get a job that pays senior engineer money, and they fire you after maybe three weeks of you just saying "it depends" and pretending your connection is bad. You still made like $5,000. And you're probably running more than one of these scams at a time. And you're doing this from a relatively poor country with not much formal education. 100% worth it. And who knows, maybe you manage…

At a big telecom we had an employee that maybe closed 10 tickets in two years. He was the highest paid team member (as reported by our director) and worked remotely from an RV in Oklahoma. When he was finally discovered by our director, he was fired and his immediate manager was fired.

How much do you want to bet that he also had one or two other jobs that he treated the same way?

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#165

Post by sinoue »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #146
lazide wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, don't bet on it. What if #2 was real, and #1 was someone stalking #2? Or an abusive ex? If #2 doesn't get the the potential job, they could come after you for all sorts of things - emotional damages, economic damage (from not getting the job), etc. They might even be able to get the court to force you to give them the job, or at least waste years of your time and mental health dealing with legal hassles. It's hil…

I mean, you're hiring a contractor off of Upwork, not from a reputable consultancy (to be clear, I'm sure established consultancies do shady shit too, but the risk profile is different), so I think the risk is pretty small. We're talking edge cases on a scenario that is already an edge case.

Even UpWork requires government ID verification. https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010609234-ID...

I wonder what financial fraud they'll need to do to get the funds as I'm assuming UpWork has to deal with tax payments being pulled out.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#166

Post by sixstringtheory »

bad416f1f5a2 wrote: post #127
sixstringtheory wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they’re stealing that salary, not earning it. Hope they work at a place that will never affect me personally.

> Sounds like they’re stealing that salary, not earning it. On the contrary – if someone has been at a company for 9 months & had terrible early reviews, the company had about ~6 months to deal with them. In my experience, truly bad hires get lukewarm 30 day feedback, negative 3 month feedback, and are on a PIP soon after. If you're there after 9 months, it suggests you've demonstrated some level of value to your emp…

I can assure you there are plenty of underperforming, incompetent and even flat out absent employees cozied up in hidden little niches at all kinds of companies that don’t let them go for a variety of reasons.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#167

Post by dont__panic »

thewebcount wrote: post #115
dont__panic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can play devil's advocate for a moment... if the company gets decent work, the non-US participant gets better (and fairer, globally) pay compared to what they'd get locally, and the US participant takes care of the "soft" side of the operation... who's getting hurt? I can't deny that something smells skeevy about this and I don't think I could ever trust a random foreign developer who I haven't built up a solid…

> who's getting hurt? The person being impersonated. Someone is out there pretending to be them. This person is known to be willing to do unethical things. (Who knows, maybe they're also infiltrating the client's network and stealing data, installing ransomware, etc.?) Furthermore, how does the person in the US pretending to be the developer get paid? Do they actually get paid, or is that a scam, too? At any point do…

Good points about the person being impersonated subject to (completely involuntary) risks. I probably should have phrased my question to specifically ask about situations where the impersonated is involved and asked to participate in the scheme. I would agree that it's not OK to just... start using someone else's identity without permission.

In sibling comments, some other great points were made about the risk profile for the company if you do this without their knowledge. I'm less convinced that I should care about risk towards the company, but from a legal standpoint it probably holds up.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#168

Post by atmosx »

blastwind wrote: post #125

Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site. This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and interviewing every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation (sorry to top comment for "impersonating" your comment style). My days are deteriorating from a colorful sphere down to two points. In fact, down to two po…

Shoutout to you sir for being honest and reaching out your fellow peer!!! I am sure you will have a great career and now you have an epic story to tell over beers with friends!

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#169

Post by dvykhopen »

I run a job platform. This scam is pervasive, especially with contract work. We've had to get really good at recognizing patterns because their covers are really good (even faking passports and work history).

Many of the big contract platforms are dealing with this too. Hiring managers are getting tired of it and are 1) not hiring as many contract workers and 2) not using platforms to hire those workers.

Unfortunately, this hurts small companies more since their hiring practices are so lax and there's a crop of new ones every few months.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#170

Post by RationPhantoms »

codazoda wrote: post #152
tg9000 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a small world! Unless you are also making up that story (which I would get a huge laugh out of) I'm 99% positive I was in the room with you when this happened. :)

Wait! Are you his manager or the imposter?!?!

What the heck is going on in this thread?
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