international news _ 12th September, 2006
Alexander Robotnick’s Myspace Imposter Mystery
Text by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
Alexander Robotnick discovered an imposter has been posing as himself on
Myspace this week, after inputting his name on a search engine.
“I discovered it during my periodical (about 4 times in a year) check on
Google using the keyword ‘Alexander Robotnick’, it appeared in the first
page of results,” the italo-disco legend told Skrufff. “Al the information
and pictures was correct but I found myself in an absurd situation because I
had neither the account nor the password to log in it.”
The identity thief set up the bogus Myspace page in July, gaining over 650
‘friends’ though deleted the account within a day, after Alexander
circulated an email asking for help to track him down.
“Actually it's not a case of identity theft. I fought such things during the
90s when I still was unaware of my ‘underground popularity’ so, when I
opened my first account on the internet (in '96) I discovered that there
were people trying to use my name to promote music or web pages,” he
continued.
“As soon as they understood that the true Robotnick was on-line they
disappeared immediately and that’s what’s happened here. This action can be
included in the crime called ‘phishing’ which is a federal crime in the USA
and punishable by law also in Europe. Whoever did it was basically
collecting personal information from my friends.”
Alexander speculated that the thief was probably Italian (‘because he can
write correctly in Italian which is not easy’) though conceded he could be
from anywhere.
“He doesn’t know anything else about me than what it's displayed on my
official web site robotnick.it. He cut and paste the information included in
my site and uploaded pictures.”
“Now that he’s disappeared I think I’ve been wrong in my approach, I should
have been cool taking my time to investigate. But evidently one of my emails
reached the destination,” he concluded.
“In a way it's a pity, because I woke up this morning feeling lucid and
resolute to solve the enigma (I like Agatha Christie). 12 hours more and I'm
sure I would have discovered the murderer.”
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