FakeIdentity, ChameleonIdentity, IdentityObfuscation,

Support
1

Hello,

strange things have been happening. Here a person with a Diaspora account shows up as Ninah Pixie ☥ when I read the conversation in my Hubzilla stream. When I read the same “DIE PARTEI” conversation on the “Home” hub hub.netzgemeinde.eu, I see the same two posts supposedly written by different people, namely Ditje and Karsten Meyer.

More details on this with screenshots and reflections from Hubzilla users in the Hubzilla Support Forum (german) and here Fake identities in Hubzilla . I am interested in ideas, suggestions, what could be the cause for such strange behavior. I would like to know if and what factors, protocol peculiarities of Zot / Diaspora are responsible for the magical multiplication and permanent transformation of identities. Anyway, to have a purposeful conversation in a cross-platform Hubzilla/Diaspora communication, it is beneficial to know that such a phenomenon ChameleonIdentity / PhantomIdentity / Fake-Identity exists.

#Hubzilla #Diaspora #Help #federation #HubzillaDiaspora #DiasporaHubzilla #FakeIdentity #Sockenpuppe #PhantomIdentity #IdentityObfuscation #ObfuscationOfIdentity #ChameleonIdentity #ThrueIdentity

2

diaspora* attaches a signature to every item sent over the federation layer, and diaspora* verifies this signature on receiving any item. You cannot forge this signature without having access to the accounts’ private key, and you cannot federate anything without a signature or with an invalid signature inside diaspora*.

If Hubzilla fails to validate signatures, or somehow internally mis-attributes a post/comment to another user, then that’s a bug in Hubzilla that should be raised with Hubzilla.

2 Likes
3

I see some accounts on diasp.org labelled [zombie account] - what does that mean?

4

It usually means they use a different main account, but still keep the old one. They rename their old account so others see which one’s active.

5

This is definitely a very strange case. However, I do not expect it to happen here on Disapora.