First of all, it happened several days ago. I dind’t react instantly, instead, I really took my time to think on it: what am I doing here? Is this wise to respond? Is this worth it? Really worth it? The answer was: well, it might not pay even the time spent to write this post, but it might be a lot of fun 
Let’s take it one at a time: several days ago I submitted to StumbleUpon one of my posts, about mind mapping. Incidentally, it happened to be one of my highest rated posts at that time. Once submitted, I had the surprise to be really hit by stumblers. Apparently, the post was well received, and it generated some traffic too.
The surprise come when I saw who dind’t liked it: it was a guy with the nickname Uru, with a photo almost identical with one of the guys I admire the most: Linus Torvalds. The guy was somehow interested in the post, but the comment was ironic: something like “the mind map (described in my post) didn’t helped with your English”…
I said, ok, this guy is so lame that he isn’t capable of publishing a decent real photo of himself, and is using some other guys identity. Social networking phishing, if you know what I mean. And the other guy identity happened to be Linus Torvalds’ identity. But one little thing caught my eyes: below the fake-picture there was a little text that said: Sponsor. The guy was a sponsor. Took me no less than a quick browsing through StumbleUpon to realize that the guy really paid 20 bucks per year in order to publish Linus photo as the photo of himself.
Hmm, this is really strange. Who is this guy, Uru, after all? And started to patiently browse that specific stumbler profile. And the bitter answer was: yes, it WAS Linus Torvalds’ profile. It has a stumble for www.linux.org with the comment: “I inspired a lot of poeple with my operating system”…
I must reckon that I remain puzzled. Several minutes. Completely puzzled. Years of Linux usage, of a somehow stubborn activism for the most advanced operating system (as I truly believed at that time) and all of a sudden everything falls into pieces. Linus is not the visionaire I believed. It’s just a strange persona that is mocking my English skills. Amazing. And bitter. I was just plain sad…
And then, after the image of Linus I knew was completely broken and squandered all over by my puzzled brains, I started to think it over… Ok, so he doesn’t like my English? Who cares? I never took a lesson of English in my life (maybe it’s time start taking some, though?) and still manage to talk/write decently. It’s not really an issue.
The issue is: should I answer to this? Or not? Ok, I thought, after several days, so why not answering to this? If it’s just for taking it out of my head, and still I should answer. And this was the moment I was REALLY starting to pay attention to the whole situation.
If you managed to come so far, I must apologize. For the title, for the fake lead I gave you, and for the little drama that I re-played for you. It was the real thing, it really happened like this, but the real outcome of the whole situation is yet to be described. I took the liberty to clearly describe my emotions and reactions in the exact order that they appear.
Because, as you always suspected, Linus does not have a profile on StumbleUpon. It’s just another guy’s profile that is really phishing Linus’ identity. I found out the that guy has nothing in common with the development of Linux and is just spamming the community with a fake image. But he had me. For several hours I was really down. Mixed emotions were randomly pushing me back and forth. From: ok, and if he IS Linus? to: ok, if he IS NOT Linus, what am I going to do about?
Until I realized that the fake Linus is telling me that I don’t know English by making his own mistakes. AFAIK, the phrase should look like: “Too bad all that mapping didn’t help your English.” not “To bad all that mapping didn’t help your English.”, notice an extra “o” for the “To” (click on the image to see what I mean)…
But that’s not the key point of the article, the key point of all this is the identity’s value. Apparently, we created a world where identity is a commodity. Something that can be created in minutes, and used with huge advantages. It’s extremely easy to take someone identity and use it as you see fit. It’s not only “traditional” phising for earning money. It’s much more than that. It’s persona wearing. Today I am Linus and tomorrow I’ll be Scoble. Or Steve Jobs. Or Merlin Mann. Or whoever I want to be. The Internet next generation operating system will have this as a slogan: “Who do you want to be today?”.
How would you feel if something similar would happen to you? If someone you admire, being your programming guru, your fashion legend, your preferred actor, could emerge into your life, do something to you, that you consider to be real, and then vanish, under the fake identity of a persona that you don’t even know?
Later edit: the guy changed his photo, and the one he has right now looks more close to what a 42 years old guy could look like. Also he changed his geographical info, but he somehow missed to change the typo he had in my review. Seems that after all, he’s much much lamer than I initially thought 
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Technorati Tags: phishing, linus torvalds, stumbleupon
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Dragos, the way I look at it is the following: we are both native speakers of Romance languages and whilst our English is far from perfect, our Globalish is pretty good!
Too bad such things happen. I was the victim of a scam from somebody who I believed was a respectful, honest and well-behaving guy I knew. When it turned out that I had been scammed, I was happy, although this cost me about 100 USD, which I would never see back in my wallet. Yes, I was happy, because otherwise I would have been extremely disappointed that a guy I thought to be great, would have been acting like such a jerk.
@Pascal: this is a great viewpoint, I will try to keep it fresh in my memory: Globalish
@Simonne: I’ve been scammed before, but this was somehow different. It was an identity shift of someone I almost believed is for real…
Listen, man… I’m sorry it had to come to this.
But maybe I’m not the hero you think I am. I’m just a programmor… just writing code each day of my life… all for what? LINUX. But is LINUX the key? Think about it.
In the end, we must find the key to what it is to do in life. I found LINUX. It is up to you to find yours.
OK, I write code too, it was just the phising situation (the the fact that you claimed to be the other person) that bothered me. Now it’s gone, let’s move on, each in its own direction…
As someone who has just stumbled on this…. writing from London. Your English is fine, as you surely know.
You want depressing? Try having an email exchange with the tech support department of a company in the UK where the workers, born and bred in the UK I BELIEVE (I can’t be sure), simply can’t write in English and can’t understand simple questions sent in an email.
Congrats on moving to the most beautiful country I’ve ever been to. I can’t say enough nice things about or the people there. I hope to go back some day.
Hi, and thanks for reading my blog. I really, really look forward to go to New Zealand, never been there before, but 99% of the people I’ve talked to had the same response as you had. Hope for you to get back there sometime soon
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