Identity theft is the new fashionable white-collar crime.
The latest victim in my circle of friends is fellow cool Filipino blogger Rannie Turingan, who runs the Photojunkie weblog and is the heart and soul of the GTABloggers (Greater Toronto Area Bloggers) group.
Rannie’s a very cool guy who takes amazing photos, and his weblog is one of the best-known photography blogs out there (it got mentioned in a story in today’s edition of the New York Times). He’s so cool that someone decided to pose as him on the community web site AsianAvenue, stealing not only his identity, but his photos and writing. Rannie’s skill with both cameras and words got this impostor named as AsianAvenue’s member of the week.
He wouldn’t have found out about it, if not for another cool Filipino blogger and friend of ours, Jeremy “Jeremiah Newbie” Cruz, who discovered the identity thief as a result of perusing his referrer logs.
Once again, an eagle-eyed blogger with a little tech-fu saves the day!