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I am being impersonated! Beware personal messages alleged to come from Simon Thornington.

Hi all,

Someone is impersonating me, using my photo even, soliciting collaboration requests. It's not me! If the email is '[email protected]', it's the scammer. The only email that is mine is [email protected]

I have emailed Quantopian about this, hopefully they can add some measures so that this is no longer possible.

Cheers,

Simon.

3 responses

Simon, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I guess you should be flattered. ;-)

We've disabled the impersonator's access to Quantopian. Of course, our mechanisms for doing that aren't entirely foolproof; if even a behemoth like Twitter can't entirely prevent people from creating fake accounts, it's unlikely that we're going to be more successful! Apparently this is now "a thing," so people should be vigilant when contacted privately about their work on Quantopian.

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Thanks for the fast response Jonathan. FYI to others, this is what the mail looked like (very convincing, when I first read it, I wasn't even sure I hadn't written it, until I noticed it was sent only yesterday):

http://imgur.com/Qngo332

We have contacted the users who were sent private messages by the fake Simon and warned them about it, aside from the user who alerted the real Simon to what was going on, since we assume Simon warned him directly.

We view this impersonation as a serious offense; indeed, it arguably constitutes attempted criminal fraud, identity theft, defamation, and tortious interference. As such, we are taking additional steps to identify the perpetrator and ensure that he/she faces appropriate consequences arising from his/her actions.