Is certainly a major topic on the minds of many people these days, more so in a world that now abides, survives even, on the laws of digital commerce. Such a concept comes in several forms; it can be as horrifying as waking up to your bank accounts showing a grand total of zen zen, zero.
Or, in my case, it could as trivial as someone using my favicon design and nickname as their online persona. Without prior permission.
Observe the favicon in the address bar of whatever browser you’re currently using to access this site at the moment. Then click here and watch, very carefully, as that logo transforms itself into a much more compressed version of itself, as if by magic. How did I find out about this? Is what my contacts have been asking me. Am I, perhaps, an egosearcher of some sort?
Actually, that’s probably closer to the truth than I’d have liked. But no, not in this instance. I was looking around the Twitter API, and decided to experiment with it, trying to sign up for an account using my usual moniker.
Twitter then informed me that it had somehow been taken, truly, a miracle of Biblical proportions: I have never seen anyone use this nickname before, and as I already have user profiles with this nickname and avatar scattered around some of the Web’s most highly visible properties, it seemed unlikely, at best, that someone else would not have noticed this when deciding on a username for themselves to adopt.
I registered a new account in order to post on the perpetrator’s Twitter account, which didn’t really tell me much other than the fact that he was Brazilian. As of now, I’ve managed to get in initial contact with him, though the language barrier is proving to be somewhat of an issue: hopefully Google Translate won’t let me down in that regard. We’ll see how it goes.
I need to get to school now, though, so I (yet again) have to cut this post short. Another time, then.
UPDATE: Mr. Hugo has kindly contacted me and removed the favicon from his site. Once again, good manners and tolerance wins over unreserved anger and rage. At least, that’s the theory, anyway.
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