🚀 go-pugleaf

Yesterday I received the following message by e-mail:

# I thought you might like to know that someone pretending to be you is
# currently on IRC trying to get ops. We're fairly sure it's not you (he
# didn't even know the URL of the Manchester Acorn Users Group) but if it 
# /was/ then my apologies for banning you from the channel.  :-)
#
# We think it's the [censored] guy, so you might like to email him
# and ask him what he was doing. I actually spoke to him for some time,
# explaining various things about IRC because I thought (and he claimed)
# to be you using IRC for the first time and I was keen to help you! He
# went by the nick DGS, and being on Argonet we couldn't tell at first
# whether or not he really was you.
#
# We got suspicious when he said "I'm well known on the newsgroups" and
# asked repeatedly for ops. I banned him when he couldn't answer a simple
# question which [censored] wouldn't know the answer to.

Since I don't know what else this individual has been up to while
impersonating me, I ought to state here that I have not ever used IRC
from an Argonet account, nor from any other Pipex Dial account.

(I have used IRC before, FWIW, but it'd probably be more than two years
ago now).

One has to wonder, though, whether this particular imposter is asking
for ops as me because (a) they can't get ops themselves and think they
stand more chance if they pretend to be me, or (b) they might be hoping
to abuse ops while pretending to be me for other reasons.

If (a), then it seems a strange way of going about it (I can think
of lots of more plausible people you could pretend to be if you wanted
a better chance of getting ops).

If (b), then it's worth noting that, while impersonating people is
not illegal, defamation of character is, and I /will/ take legal action
if necessary.

(Not that I'm characteristically given to over-reacting, of course :),
but I've already taken informal legal advice, and making this
posting is one of the things that I was advised to do.)

Thanks again to the people on IRC who have informed me of this,
and taken action.

Apologies for the curious cross-posting, followups by e-mail to
avoid filling up these groups with irrelevancies please.

Now I suppose I'm going to have to start PGP-signing all my
postings *sigh*

-- 
dgs@argonet.co.uk  -  accept no imitations

          Acorn user near Manchester?   - or -   PC card owner?
   See MAUG and PC card info pages via : http://ox.compsoc.org.uk/~dgs/

"Good spelling is welcomed, what is better is actually having a knowledge
 of what one is writing."  -  Barry Wickett