How This Guy Lost A $50,000 Twitter Username

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While what happened to this guy really sucks (pay close attention to what PayPal and GoDaddy did), is a Twitter handle really worth $50k just because you said it was?

I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up.
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Wow that is just crazy. I never use those services anyway and have a seperate gmail account for sites and services that forward to a email server I control so at no point can anyone take anything of worth over, but it's a crazy world out there and someone is always trying to steal your stuff.
 
Vorret said:
Damn, insane story
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Agreed. It's amazing where value is placed these days. Good thing I weaned myself off of social networks a long time ago. Facebook, Twitter, etc. are huge time sinks when I have better things to do such as post on HardForum or browse Newegg. :cool: :p
 
Heh he should have changed his conclusion to: Stupid people use social media and get pwned
 
forgot about the social networking side of things. What happen between paypal and godaddy is fucking crazy. That should have never happen.
 
yea.. the paypal - godaddy security slip up is HUGE!..

and then the fact that Godady wouldn't recover your domain information is insane.. can they not see the history of the changes?
 
What's even crazier is he turned down $50K for a fucking Twitter handle...
 
Yeah, for 50K I would have sold it in a heartbeat, it's a Twitter handle, who cares, 50K on the other hand, yummy.
 
Sounds like he was more interested in being "that guy who owns @N" than making some money from it. Why that is I have no idea...
 
I called the US government about my mom's social security benefits and was allowed to guess some information multiple times to complete it. Hell I told the guy I was guessing. My buddy bought a car in his father's name even though his dad is 70 and he's 35. Dealership nor the finance company he went to cared that he wasn't 70. My nephew needed a copy of his Win 8 key. Microsoft employee let him guess enough right information about a purchase his father completed to get his key emailed to him and not his father.

People are stupid. Always remember this.
 
50K for a Twitter Name.... This Brought to you by the RIAA!

The RIAA - Overpricing shit to make people think a stolen song costs a million dollars!

Moron should have sold it when there was 50K on the table!
 
It's a bit early yet, but Forbes got some responses from the companies in question:

Forbes said:
In response to reporters’ questions about Hiroshima’s story, @Ask PayPal tweeted “our investigation did NOT disclose any credit card details. More info soon.” Twitter said it is investigating but does not comment on individual’s accounts. GoDaddy has not yet responded to a request for comment.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseac...-twitter-handle-commits-a-near-perfect-crime/
 
dasaint said:
should have sold it when there was 50K on the table!
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Cannot argue with that, someone offers me $50k for any online anything and they can have it. Hell I would probably mail somebody one of my testicles for $50k cash.
 
B00nie said:
Heh he should have changed his conclusion to: Stupid people use social media and get pwned
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-1

Social media can be a way to get yourself out there and earn more money if you are freelancing. Looked to me like he could be. I don't personally use it either, but it's an avenue now like it or not.

It boils down to lazy ass companies not doing any job at all of protecting your stuff. A quick phone call to the registered owner would have ended the hackers attempts. Sure, he could have been more cautious about the way he used his e-mail address, but one or two wrong guesses should be enough for a call.
 
Dude will get @N back now that its making the news rounds and causing embarrassment for these inept megacorps manned by monkeys. Godaddy & Paypal & Twitter will all deny any & fingerpoint and say investigations revealed nothing but Twitter will give it back to him anyway courtesty of executive override, in turn courtesy of media pressure.

The bigger point is its shedding light on all the people with lesser accounts that are getting screwed on a daily basis, but shedding a light for five minutes before people go back to the latest dogs with sunglasses 'tube montage making the daily rounds.
 
Didn't sell a twitter handle for $50k..I think the bigger story here is how much of a moron this guys is.
 
Man, I never really liked either companies, but this is just insane.
 
This story is crazy. Reminds me alot of the type of stuff Kevin Mitnick would do. You don't even need software exploits in order to break into shit if you have the proper social engineering skills.
 
H-street said:
yea.. the paypal - godaddy security slip up is HUGE!..
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There is a reason I link paypal to a credit card instead of a bank account, this confirms it. Don't fucking trust anyone, bank account can be drained and you're proper fucked, credit card you're not as liable, however you can get people fucking with you like this and if those two companies ever admitted to what they did they'd be in a huge lawsuit super storm.
 
Plot twist: This guy never owned @N in the first place and is trying to scam everyone to get ahold of it. :D

(THAT would be crazy)
 
sfsuphysics said:
There is a reason I link paypal to a credit card instead of a bank account, this confirms it.
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Problem with that is Paypal fucks you over if you don't have a bank account on file (extra fees, no Verified status, etc.).
 
Social engineering is a bitch. 90% of the world would fall for it if they hadn't been previously trained on it. Even then, there's always someone smarter than you.
 
As for everyone screaming OMG he didn't sell for $50K. So what. $50K isn't that big of a deal to everyone.

Yes I would love to have an extra $50k, but then again it depends on what I have to do for it.

It sounds like he ran multiple sites. maybe he made a good amount off of them. He did seem afraid of losing them so I doubt they were just a bunch of BS sites. On top of that maybe he posted stuff on his twitter page he wanted people to see.

If you are a brand you don't want to lose it. coke isn't going to want to sell their twitter handle for 50k. Neither would famous person. Some internet personality with thousands of followers wouldn't want to sell either.

So not wanting to sell doesn't mean anything as we don't know what he had to give up with said handle.
 
1) Industry standard security for card data (PCI-DSS) allows the first six and last four card digits to be stored and processed with essentially no security implications - they are not subject to the same security requirements as whole card numbers and it is not considered a problem to have them widely visible. It goes without saying that these digits should not be used for any sort of security verification, identity confirmation etc!

2) Do other countries not have laws against this sort of personal data disclosure/breach? In the UK giving this sort of data (credit card details) to the wrong person is a serious criminal offence (c.f. a felony). If companies are doing this routinely, it's not a question of putting a note on the account asking them not to do it or some such nonsense, it's a question of taking appropriate and immediate legal action. The unauthorised access itself is also a criminal offence (computer misuse), and then there's blackmail on top of that - obviously the perpetrator there is harder to trace, but law enforcement should have been involved in this right away on the basis of the multiple serious offences (assuming the US has similar laws against this sort of thing).
 
Exavior said:
As for everyone screaming OMG he didn't sell for $50K. So what. $50K isn't that big of a deal to everyone.
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If a twitter handle is a bigger deal to you than 50k, you are a gal damn idiot. From the sound of it this was not a brand or part of any business. It's a single frigging letter. Also, 45% of households in the US made less than 50k in 2013. Now tell me how these people screaming OMG are being ridiculous again?
 
People never learn. Go daddy is beyond awful, and never use an email address from a personal domain for other accounts you have. Guess they didn't learn from over a year ago, gmail with second factor authentication is very secure (assuming strong passwords). Especially if this idiot knew he was sitting on a coveted twitter handle, he ought to have taken better precautions (and definitely not been using Godaddy go for anything.
 
This just in "A moron (seriously... he uses GoDaddy?) cares more about his image (@N) than his money (Oh, someone's trying to hack my paypal, I'll worry about that later...)"
 
What is the point in stealing a fake "name"? A pen name? Or paying $50k?

It's only important if one claimed it in 2006 because they were quick and savvy.
 
Burticus said:
Cannot argue with that, someone offers me $50k for any online anything and they can have it. Hell I would probably mail somebody one of my testicles for $50k cash.
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Time to ante up on this... I only pay on results. ;c)
 
This gets to even be a little more of a slap in the face. Person that took the account from him deleted the account. He tried to get it back and it said it was unavailable a short while later somebody had it.

MRAB54 said:
If a twitter handle is a bigger deal to you than 50k, you are a gal damn idiot. From the sound of it this was not a brand or part of any business. It's a single frigging letter. Also, 45% of households in the US made less than 50k in 2013. Now tell me how these people screaming OMG are being ridiculous again?
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Yes it is a single letter, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't known by that or that it wasn't a "brand".

This guy is a developer

He is the creator of this
http://cocoyon.me/

calls himself a developer of this so not sure if his site or not
http://www.echofon.com/

Now he has 34K followers but most of these might be new. Echofon has 2.88M followers. So I am guessing that they are popular.

Even if 45% of houses might have made less than 50K. but that doesn't mean that this guy did. He lives in Palo Alto. Median income in Palo Alto is over $100K. Houses cost over $1M.

if done right you can leverage the name and use it to make yourself money, and maybe make more than the $50K. Look at something like facebook, they were offered something like $1M, turned it down and have made more than that. Just because you are offered one amount no matter how crazy the number might seem doesn't mean that you can't earn more than that by keeping something.
 
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