[Noisebridge-discuss] stop pretending to be me

[Andy Isaacson]

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 02:06:55PM -0700, cynthia lee wrote:
> Hi,
> I do not know who you are but I have not authorized you to pretend to be
> me.

Hi Cynthia (and everybody else who's gotten impersonated on the
noisebridge lists),

The correct way to respond to an email forgery is to calmly deny that
it's you and cite any evidence to the contrary.  In this case it's quite
obvious that it's not you since it's a different gmail account, so just
state that it's not you.

Beyond that, simply ignore the forgeries.  The griefers thrive on sowing
discord and making their victims look like idiots by overreacting; take
away their win condition by not overreacting and they'll generally stop.
It's like dealing with a spoiled 5 year old; if you react to the
provocation they'll keep doing it.

You can report the account to abuse at gmail.com if you like; if you do so,
I would recommend having someone proofread your email so that it sounds
like it was written by a normal person rather than sounding like it was
written by a paranoid schizophrenic person.  (Note that this sentence
does NOT accuse you of BEING paranoid, but implies that you sometimes
write things that SOUND like they were written by a paranoid person,
which causes me and many other people to discount your ideas and
statements of evidence.)

I am willing to block postings to noisebridge lists by imposter
accounts, but I'm afraid I'll need people to *tell me* when accounts are
imposters.  Don't assume that I see all the messages, and don't assume
that I know when things are forgeries; people do and say crazy things.

I'll presumably need to validate that requests for blocks come from real
people, so please also provide some way for me to verify a block; the
easiest way is to provide a phone number and time I can call to talk to
you about the block.

-andy