Somehow Mystere hacked my Gravatar account and has been posting comments to his "Moonbat Spanker" blog as me. He denies it, of course, but I have proof. I will likely reveal (at some future date) what the evidence is, but for now I will say no more. I don't want to tip off Mystere and give him a chance to cover his tracks.
Today I forwarded my evidence to Gravatar. I identified Mystere (myfoxmystere on Gravatar) as the individual responsible for hacking my account and suggested that they kick him off their platform (both Gravatar and WordPress).
What follows is the email I received after my first Gravatar contact concerning the fake comments I noticed on Mystere's blog.
| Knox (Automattic): Hello, It does appear that someone is using your account to post these comments. I understand that you have changed your password, but please go through the security steps to do all of our suggested options. Most importantly, we highly recommend two step authentication. I would also suggest updating your email password and adding two step authentication there as well (if that is possible with your email provider). Please let us know if you have additional questions. Regards, Knox | Community Guardian | WordPress.com (April 23, 12:14 UTC). |
So I enabled "two step authentication" as suggested. Does this mean that Mystere is locked out of account? I'm not sure. The last fake comment is dated 5/5/2018. According to what Mystere wrote, "I love dog meat [because] it's a delicacy".
I did NOT write this! Even though the comment shows up as being made with MY account! Meaning that this is not a case of impersonation, but of hacking. An act that should absolutely get Mystere booted from Gravatar and cause him to lose his WordPress blog.
Searching my emails yesterday because I wanted to reread the recent message I received from Gravatar, I found the following message from WordPress.
| Howdy, We recently discovered your login credentials in a list of compromised emails and passwords published by a group of security researchers. This list was not generated as the result of any exploit on WordPress.com, but rather someone gaining access to the email & password combination you also used on another service.
For your security, we have temporarily locked your WordPress.com account. (12/24/2017). |
Now, I don't recall reading this message back in December, although I assume I must have. And that I changed my password in order to unlock my account. Who the hell are these "security researchers"?? I don't have a clue. This might explain how Mystere gained access to my Gravatar account. Or it might not.
What I am certain of, however, is that Mystere is the guilty party. Even though the a-hole suggests (in a commentary Mystere authored using his "rattrapper" sockpuppet) that one of my "serious enemies" trolled me (faked comments by me on the "Moonbat Spanker" blog). Also that, due to these fake comments, I was "publicly humiliated".
A blog that nobody reads (except for Mystere and his sockpuppets) isn't really that "public", IMO. It isn't as if (metaphorically speaking) this occurred in the town square. It was more like a back alley. Unless others are looking but not commenting at Mystere's WP blog, I say this "humiliation" is known to very few people (single digits). Maybe the number of people reading (and not commenting) pushes that number into the double digits (if there are any non-commenting readers). But I doubt there are.
Not that it matters. A fake comment using another account (a parody ID, for example) or "anonymously" (which allows a commenter to enter any name they want) is one thing. Using my ACTUAL Gravatar account is another. A violation of the WordPress Terms of Service (TOS). Or so I assumed. The actual Gravatar TOS page doesn't mention any actions that could get a user banned. It does note that they can't "guarantee the identity of any other users or websites with whom you may interact in the course of using the Services".
Still, it is my hope that Mystere will be banned and his Gravatar account and WordPress blog are shut down. It all depends on whether or not my evidence convinces Gravatar that it was Mystere who hacked my account, I suspect. If they can confirm it was him, I think they'd WANT to ban his ass. But maybe they won't care.
As the Orange Turd in the White House says, "we'll see what happens". Obviously (and I think anyone would agree) account hacking is an action that should not be tolerated. And Mystere absolutely should pay a steep penalty for this act of pure scumbaggery.
(Note: Automattic is the name of the company that owns Gravatar and WordPress. Similar to how Google owns Blogger, I assume. As per Wikipedia, "Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005").
Response from Gravatar dated 5/8/2018:
ReplyDeleteHowdy Dervish, We have received your support request! We will respond as quickly as possible. If anything changes, please respond to this e-mail to keep us updated. For your reference, a copy of your request is below. Thank you for using Gravatar.
No response yet. Hopefully they get back to me sometime next week.