Attack Of The Orkut Clones (And How To Remove Them)

(Image Credit: Collectoybles)

Story: So you are surfing Orkut one day and your friend contacts you and asks why you are scraping disgusting remarks about their girlfriend. You laugh at the your friends accusation, saying you would never do that until he points you to a profile that has your image on it.

Worse, it has your contact info, as well as a list of all your friends. It's a fake profile. So now, what do you do?

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Many people have been scraping, commenting (on older posts) or emailing questions on how to remove a fake profile. Although some may consider this trivial, it has resulted in some embarrassing situations for certain people, and believe it or not I've heard of worse examples bordering on criminal.

So for those of you who are harassed by these fake profiles, here are some recommended steps that you can take to successfully remove these profiles from Orkut, as well as suggestions of what NOT to do when you discover one.

1. Flag the profile: This is the first step that you need to do (and if you skip this, you may end up making the process longer). Underneath every profile (and community) there is a report abuse button where you can notify Google of the offense.
   
   
   
   Select the impersonating someone else or is a fake person option...
   
   
   
   ...and in the text field below provide a detailed description of why this profile is fake, along with links to your real profile and the fake one for Google to compare.



2. Alert your friends: Contact your friends online (via email not scrapbook) and ask them to do the same above.
   
   The email method would be advisable over scrapbook because it doesn't alert Mr. Fake Profile on what is happening and it keeps your friends scrapbook from being flooded with unnecessary outrage.
   
   Note: For those of you who are Firefox fans, Orkut Helper makes this process so much easier as all you have to do is right click and select "report as bogus" on the profile link.
   
   
   



3. Alert the Orkut Public: believe it or not, there are certain forums whose sole purpose is to alert each other about fake profiles so they can (as a group) remove them from Google's system. See this post for details.



4. Contact the Authorities: Only do this if the fake profile created is posting your personal info online (i.e. phone numbers, email, address) and random people are requesting disgusting services (you know what I mean by this).
   
   American users will probably receive a faster response (being that Orkut is hosted here locally) than those in other nations such as Brazil or India. Either way, don't go off into "Google hating," as they often have to balance user privacy against justice issues.
   
   Note: If you are a lady, I would recommend contacting the authorities if the profile is harassing you in any way, as these losers should know better.



5. Relax and wait: Don't let this one profile ruin your experience online. After you (and various individuals) have reported this, simply go on surfing Orkut, and enjoying life in Google's deep blue forum.
   
   Also give Google at least two weeks to remove the profile, as they are supporting close to 50 million users on Orkut alone, let alone the hundreds of millions (if not billions) who use their other services daily.
   
   Note: if after two weeks you do not receive a response, you can contact Orkut directly over here or alert Google at security [at] google [dot] com .

Now that you know the steps you have to take to successfully remove a profile, here are several things you SHOULD NOT do:

• Hack the account: This will not only get you banned from Orkut, but also from most of Google's services.
  
  Worse, your fake profile would still remain, spreading even more havoc online.



• Threaten the user: Although it may feel great to vent how you feel towards Mr. Fake profile, this could also not only get you banned, but also arrested as well (which would make the situation worse).
  
  Note: Ironically in similar situations I've seen some people get banned from Orkut because of this (which helps out your enemy more than it helps out you).



• Spam their scrapbook: It's not only a waste of time, but also a quick way to earn Google's wrath.


• Yell at Google: I would only recommend this if you want to slow down the response time for Google to solve your problem.
  
  Simply alert Google to your problem, and do not spell in all caps (it's considered yelling) and check your grammar and spelling.

That's it thus far, and hopefully these steps will help aid your fight against these impostors. I am interested to hear on other ways people have combated these Orkut clones, and if you have any advice or stories to share, then let the rest of us know by posting below.

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