I was recently approached by a user claiming to be the developer of Sync for Lemmy who wanted to be a moderator of the community I created, !syncforlemmy.

I was able to verify this user was indeed LJ Dawson as I knew where to contact him on Discord.

It is quite possible that an impostor user on another instance may be created, for example ljdawson@beehaw.org could easily be made.

Should Lemmy have a verified user marker for members who are of importance to any given community? Are there any other options to protect users against nefarious persons playing impostor?

  • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No.

    Let’s say you trust billg@microsoft.com. Anyone can already create billg@scam-site.cn. You wouldn’t trust that, why would you trust any other account you can’t authenticate?

    Like most impersonation questions, the answer is to verify identity through a known trusted source, as you did.