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shazow | 5 years ago

I just tried and failed: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1295835462360338436

I used a realistic sounding name, I tried several email addresses that were rejected as blocked, eventually I landed on an email that worked and my account got immediately disabled.

I'm sure I could eventually succeed, but I don't believe that it's fair to brush this off as something that anybody could do easily.

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klyrs|5 years ago

Your tweet indicates that you were stopped by the "government ID required" hoop. I've been there. I'm no graphics design wizard, but I foiled this by (1) taking a photograph of my actual government ID, (2) copying letters around to spell the name I'm known by, (3) applying some noise and blur filters (4) downsampling, and (5) redacting all PII except name & face. Compared to making an actual fake ID, I call this quite simple.

I imagine that you could use a plausible but fake name and a plausible but fake "random person" image, but I'm not interested in actually interacting with that website enough to try.

You might try a clean OS & browser install, to avoid trackers, and maybe if you've been banned a bunch already, use a VPN (or stop using a VPN) or use Starbucks wifi or something.

Alupis|5 years ago

That is, admittedly, a lot of work, even if it does bypass this absurd requirement.