Member-only story
META MEDIUM
It’s an Impersonation, Not a Hack
And this one was not very bright
I noticed this morning that my Medium account has been impersonated. Medium people often call this a hack, but it’s not: no one but me has logged into my account. This is only someone pretending to be me.
I found out because this dim bulb (if it hasn’t been purged yet) clapped for a comment I wrote. That clap went into my notifications, and it made me wonder why and how I’d clapped on my own post. Of course, I hadn’t, so I took a screenshot and reported it to Medium.
This sort of nonsense would be trivial for Medium to detect and not allow. Even if the impersonator made slight modifications, fuzzy comparisons of text and photos are not at all difficult. Medium should do fuzzy checks on profile updates and reject anything too close to an existing user.
Why doesn’t Medium do this? Beats me — if I were in charge, it would have been included in the first draft.
It wouldn’t hurt if more people requested this. Go here and scroll down to “Submit Feedback”.
