June 13

The Facebook Vanity URL Debacle

14  comments

The Facebook Vanity URL Debacle

By Jason Moffatt

June 13, 2009

facebook, spammers, squatters, vanity url, vanity urls

Everybody was excited to learn that Facebook was going to allow users to now use “Vanity URL’s”. And when I say everybody, I really mean a few Facebook users and a whole lot of SPAMMERS!

Right this moment, spammers are running rampant on Facebook claiming up every popular name they can. It doesn’t matter whether or not they are actually affiliated with the name or the company, it’s just a big time online land grab. And Facebook has done very little to even stop it.

My profile has been jacked by some dickhead named Jake Smith. My buddy John Reese got his snatched too. Same with Frank Kern. And same thing with just about every popular marketer who didn’t sit around at the stroke of midnight last night to claim their name.

I’m assuming Facebook will give us the vanity URL’s back. At least they better. If not, Jake Smith is in for a world of hurt if he ever tries to use my name to gather traffic to his page.

If you don’t know what a vanity URL is, it’s basically just a shortened version of the URL. Right now, my personal profile URL is long and ugly. Virtually impossible to remember when it looks like this… http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=634453082

A vanity URL looks like this http://www.facebook.com/jasonmoffatt (which I should be the rightful owner of).

I’ve sent Facebook a message and sent the squatter a message. Hopefully it will be rectified soon. If not, I’m thinking of going Tony LaRussa on them as this is pure bullshit they allowed this to happen so easily.

I reckon they have a huge problem on their hands right now. There must be massive amounts of spam vanity URL’s at this moment, and growing by the minute. Facebook should of put some precautions in the way to make sure spammers didn’t have a wide open field to abuse people, companies, trademarks, etc. etc. So far, every vanity URL I’ve seen is a impostor.

If you haven’t gotten your own vanity URL yet, you may want to log into your Facebook account and see if it’s still available. That is if it hasn’t been snatched by some scum sucking low life bottom feeder.

Best of luck.

About the author

Jason Moffatt

Jason Moffatt is a former private detective turned internet marketer who uses his skills of keen observation and deductive reasoning to pinpoint the easiest paths to success online. He’s passionate about helping entrepreneurs in the health & wellness field along with those in the personal development space. Jason believes we’re all a work in progress and that each day presents an opportunity to be a little be better than the last.

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  1. Facebook needs to have the same arbitration methods that are available for regular domain squatters. If you can prove that someone has registered your trademarked name, or your own name, then you should be able to get your domain registered to you.

    The people who are domain squatting on Facebook should be prosecuted and fined.

  2. Jason, I know you’re upset. I am too. But let’s put this into perspective. Today, tens of millions of people will go without adequate food and water. That’s *true* injustice.

    Oh, and for what it’s worth… someone like John Reese has bigger problems on his hands. How the f–k did he somehow neglect to register “johnreese.com” ??? LOL Some other dude is using that name to sell real estate. I mean, talk about domain squatting…

    Anyway, in due course things will be sorted out… and if Facebook basically tells us to f–k off, we can just tell THEM to f–k off and stop using their service. That’s what Reese will apparently do according to his Twitter post about this mess. He’s saying he is shutting down his Facebook account. I might do the same thing if I don’t get the vanity URL that I want and that I feel I’m entitled to.

  3. F@*&K’N SPAMMERS! Facebook should ban those users. This kind of crap is annoying.

    But Alex is right. Let’s put this into perspective. We now know that Frank Kern IS Kanye West. LOL!

  4. Linda, I’d prefer waterboarding them myself.

    Shawn, “Domain Squatting” means registering a website that uses the name of another person or company that is not associated with you. For instance, if I registered http://www.michaeljordan.com before the real MJ had a chance to with the intentions of capitalizing from his fame and notoriety.

    Alex, True, it’s not the end of the world. But I just came off of 23 days on pain pills, and I’ll rant, rave, and bitch all I want to right now.

    As for the tens of millions without adequate water, that is a sad affair, but has nothing to do with this discussion. That argument could be inserted into just about any rant at any time. I think that’s a given, and in this case quite irrelevant, especially since I’ve done more then 99% of people to help bring more clean water to Africa.

  5. UPDATE: Just learned that those a–holes at FB are going to follow the the footsteps of Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Gmail and basically tell us to screw off… So what they’re apparently saying is that if someone registers johnreese@hotmail.com (to use John as an example again) or johnreese@gmail.com, or johnreese@yahoo.com — that basically John would have to basically pursue legal action if he wanted that undone.

    See, the problem with this is that anyone can register these names… my name (alex linder) was taken on Gmail, so I had to add numbers at the end of my name. So I guess it’ll have to be Facebook.com/JohnReese2 or something like that. What can we really do about this, REALISTICALLY? It totally sucks.

  6. Oh yeah — and SHOULD people with the same name be handled? I just checked that JohnReese.com site more carefully, and actually, it looks like a “real” guy has the same name and is legitimately selling real estate (I initially though it was a squatter… but the more I looked, the more legitimate it seemed).

  7. Hi Jason,

    I think the only legitimate cause that can be filed with Facebook is if you have a trademark that’s being infringed. Also, your trademark would have to be registered before the infringer grabbed the URL (as is the case with domain names and ICANN arbitration.)

    I had to deal with this a lot as a web hosting company owner. Maybe it’s time to trademark your real name? (Lame, I know, but then you’d definitely have a case.)

    It will be interesting to see how Facebook handles this. They’ve certainly created a mess for themselves.

    -Erica

  8. Haha.

    You know what Jason. I do see some resemblance there. However, Milli Vanilli was a duo. So are you Rob or Fab?

    @Alex – “but the more I looked, the more legitimate it seemed” — That’s what she said.

  9. Yeah I had exactly the same problem and had to accept mrappleton! WTF! I cant even get my name as a .com or .co.uk because some muppet has a family album online containing 10 pictures.

  10. Hey Jason,

    As I commented on Ed Dale’s post about the same topic. I would think that you should be pleased (in a way) about someone wanting to get your name as their vanity URL for Facebook, it just goes to show that you’ve made an impact in the IM world.

    Matt

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