Impersonation on Discord

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CPiGuy
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:19 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa

Impersonation on Discord

Post by CPiGuy »

As admin of the MS quizbowl Discord server I was made aware of an unusual and troubling situation today.

The Discord user e!#3732 has evidently been consistently impersonating another student. This was discovered when they signed up for a tournament today under that student's name, but did not actually show up to said tournament. The TD reached out directly to the student in question, who confirmed that he did not sign up for today's tournament, nor was the Discord account that claimed to be him actually him.

Another member of the server said that "e!" was active in writing and editing questions for a question set she was working on, and had been doing so under the name of the same student they impersonated to sign up for today's tournament. That student also confirmed that he had not been writing questions for this set.

Fraudulently signing up for, and no-showing, a tournament is largely just annoying, but signing up to work on a set under a false name, and making significant (and apparently legitimate) contributions towards that set, is a massive red flag for me for a potential attempt at cheating or otherwise illicitly distributing unclear set content. I'm posting publicly about this in case there are other sets that this mystery person has worked on, or is working on, or in case other people have had interactions with this account on Discord and may have some idea of who they are.

I'm also posting because I think people who are editing or otherwise coordinating sets should be aware of the possibility of people trying to gain access to set content in this manner. I'm not sure what the best way to deal with this possibility is -- it does remain a sufficiently rare possibility that I think "don't let anyone write for your set who doesn't have an established Discord posting history or someone to vouch for them" is too harsh of a policy, but it's largely up to what individual set editors feel is appropriate.

(Edit to clarify: I legitimately don't know who this person is; I'm not referring to them as "this mystery person" to try to protect them or something. If you do, please say so.)
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
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