As more celebrities and popular influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service is facing increasing concerns about identity theft and verified identity.

The Bluesky Safety team announced Friday that the company has updated its identity theft policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “identity theft and handle squatting accounts will be removed.”

The company said it should be able to respond more quickly to reports of identity theft as it has quadrupled the size of its moderation team, although there is still “a large backlog of moderation reports due to the influx of new users.”

Anecdotally, over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a growing number of Bluesky posts asking “Is this a real person or a parody account?” without a definitive answer in the replies. Other users have also started putting together their own verification lists and badges.

One reason for the confusion: Bluesky lacks a verified user ID as known on Twitter (now known as X, which replaced the old verification with a paid subscription). Instead, it relies on other signals, such as verified domains in user handles, to signal an account’s trustworthiness. For example, you can tell that someone is actually connected to Bluesky if their handle contains the domain “bsky.team”.

In this regard, Bluesky also said that it “works behind the scenes to help many organizations and high-profile individuals set up their verified domain handles.”

As for parodies and fan accounts, the company said they are allowed, “but they must clearly identify themselves in both the display name and bio so others know the account is not official.” And Bluesky said, ” “Impersonation” is not allowed. “So if you set up an impersonation account just to gain followers and switch to another identity that is no longer impersonation in order to keep that account, your account will be removed.”

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said earlier this week that the company may eventually put more work into verifying accounts while allowing other apps or organizations to provide their own verification: “You can choose to trust us – the Bluesky team’s verification – or they could do their own verification.”

Similarly, the Bluesky Safety team concluded its updates by saying, “We also hear your feedback: users want more ways to verify their identity beyond domain verification.” We are currently exploring additional options to improve account verification and hope “We will be able to tell you more shortly.”