The social network Ello is being plagued by cyber squatters as early invitees of the service snap up prominent company usernames.
Accounts such as @gmail, @paypal and @tumblr have already been taken, with some merely being held without posts while others are used as normal accounts.
Christopher Boyd, malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes, said: "I’m pretty sure the user registered as @gmail called ‘Michael Buble’ and sporting a Twilight background isn’t the place to go for breaking Email service updates."
An account set up at @tumblrofficial told Ello to "stop trying to be the new Tumblr" jokingly adding that they would see the newcomer in court.
Meanwhile the phoney @officialfacebook account told users that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would ban all Ello users from his network if they did not return promptly.
"As the site is still in beta and people aren’t really sure how to use it yet, the lack of posted updates prevents us from getting a feel for what’s real and what isn’t," Boyd added.
Ello claimed it is currently seeing 31,000 requests an hour for invitations to its ad-free platform, whose owner Paul Budnitz has promised not to sell user data, and dismissed Facebook as "an ad platform".
While brands are allowed on to the network they are not given any special treatment, though Ello has previously banned accounts that impersonate brands.
The service also lacks several basic security features, such as user blocking and inappropriate content flagging, and some of the multimedia functionality that other networks boast.
