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How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

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Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#271

Post by harryh »

zz9pza wrote: post #219
maxerickson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it valuable? What amazing things are other single character handles being used for? Or is it just vaguely notable?

harry works around people that pine for vanity usernames. vanity = big deal in those circles. who knows why. not bad in itself. places like foursquare, people know people at twitter. if your outside the valley twitter won't even help you when the autosuspender mistakenly pops your account but valley/connected people call an investor or executive and get their vanity handle in hours. seen it happen twice. it's all who…

Twitter never would have taken @n if the right person called.

Up until maybe 18-24 months ago if you knew the right folks you could generally get an inactive account released but even that is pretty much off the table at this point.

All industries have insiders. In some you can get a twitter handle, in others hard to get concert tickets, in others I bet it's early access to the latest in air ventilation equipment. It's not malicious. It's just personal relationships.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#272

Post by Achshar »

blueskin_ wrote: post #228
chavesn wrote: post #162

Why would a company ever ever ever accept 6 digits of a credit card number as a way to authenticate an identity?? Credit card numbers are not secure. Therefore, they should not ever be accepted as authentication. Especially only 6 digits of it! This is by far the most shocking part of this story. As if I needed another reason to despise GoDaddy. [Edited to add] I would sure love to see a scarlet letter list of compan…

well, http://plaintextoffenders.com exists - someone should make creditcardoffenders.com .

Kind of off topic but that site also shows sites that email users their password when they create the account. That does not necessarily mean they store it plain text. Though the kind of devs that would send the password in email are likely to store it in plain text, but it's not necessary.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#273

Post by baldfat »

fuj wrote: post #256
ck2 wrote: post #253

This story is horrifying because PayPal was the enabler. PayPal gave the attacker the last four digits of my credit card number over the phone That person should lose their job if it is not PayPal policy. I really hope by some small chance the person that did this gets some serious prison time, if not for this then anything else prior or down the road. Then maybe one of those mornings they wake up in prison they can…

This wasn't paypal's fault. I mean entirely. The problem was with goDaddy. The last 4 digits of credit cards show's up everywhere. Check your receipts. Related question in stackexchange: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/37758/safety-of-... GoDaddy should not use the 4 last digits as a way to confirm identity, exactly for the reason I mentioned above

Why oh why do people support GoDaddy?

I find their TV Commercials the worst and makes us as a community go back to the 1950s stereo types????

Love it when I help churches with their websites and it has a GoDaddy account :(

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#274

Post by brador »

harel wrote: post #260
chmars wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to disagree: The right of ownership includes to right to use what you own in your own way.

I'm not using my home tomorrow morning. Is it alright for just anyone to go in and take ownership of it?

In a naturalistic sense? Yes. You only have a "right" to anything you can defend.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#275

Post by rajbala »

jrs99 wrote: post #140
brador wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he wasn't using it much. Thus, isn't he basically a squatter?

He's definitely a squatter. If you own something and you don't use it, you're a squatter. I own an old original Nintendo that I haven't used all year. That's why if someone comes into my house and takes it, it's my own fault.

He has 15,000 tweets, but basically stopped tweeting in 2013. I wouldn't call him a squatter.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#276

Post by 67726e »

dunk010 wrote: post #251
aptwebapps wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might piss off the attacker pretty bad, though. Not saying that's wrong, just that resulting shenanigans might be a little asymmetric.

"that resulting shenanigans might be a little asymmetric. " - What does this statement even mean? You should think before you just throw a load of cliches into a sentence.

As in the attacker would be able to pop up and attack the original user of @N at will for what might very well be a vicious attempt to take over or destroy as much of his digital holdings as possible.

The grandfather post is referencing asymmetric warfare[0] which would be a pretty decent name for what could happen. I don't think he just threw some cliches into a sentence.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assymetrical_warfare

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#277

Post by mikegreen »

aaronbasssett wrote: post #270
hkmurakami wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attacked got the last 4 from Paypal and Godaddy asked him to guess two more digits.

Guess from a fairly limited set as well, it wasn't all numbers 00-99. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Issuer_Identification_N...

Something isn't right. They ask for the 2 digits before the last 4, and then let him guess the first two.

I'm really interested to see godaddy's response to this...I'm sure paypal records their interactions, I would imagine godaddy does as well. Hell, I called Avis about something 2 months later with a dispute and they pulled the recording to make sure I wasn't BS'ing them.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#278

Post by 67726e »

jrs99 wrote: post #140
brador wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he wasn't using it much. Thus, isn't he basically a squatter?

He's definitely a squatter. If you own something and you don't use it, you're a squatter. I own an old original Nintendo that I haven't used all year. That's why if someone comes into my house and takes it, it's my own fault.

Let's not confuse digital "property" with physical property. It's disingenuous at best, flat out wrong at worst. On top of that, you don't own a Twitter handle, or for that matter a domain, you rent it.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#279

Post by harryh »

atyoung wrote: post #109
harryh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're deliberately not hearing what I'm saying. Here's a good analogy: Some rich guy buys an amazing house on a beautiful California beachfront. But then never even bothers to stay there because he's got 3 other vacation homes. It just sits there empty all year long. Would it be ok for someone to break in and start living there? No, of course not. But you do have to kind of dislike that guy right? If he does…

If I own it, it's none of your or anyone else's business what I do with it. One should neither pass judgement on how I use it, why I use it, or if I use it, because it's mine (provided what I do with it isn't criminal in nature). Dislike != ok to take my shit.

Did you even read what I wrote?

"Would it be ok for someone to break in and start living there? No, of course not."

Dislike != ok to take my shit but it's still dislike.

Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

#280

Post by odinho »

riffic wrote: post #168
lancewiggs wrote: post #98

Everyone looks bad here, but I want to focus on Twitter. For me this case is yet another demonstration that Twitter sees its customers as advertisers and places low priority on the community. I pay Twitter nothing, and yet the service is valuable to me. So instead of continuously crippling the service in the name of goodness knows what, why not actually charge users for a premium experience. Things like customer serv…

Or look into alternatives in the microblogging space. What ever happened to Status.net/ostatus?

They started pump.io instead. Which is a much more low-level project than StatusNet. Trying to build a federation-server that other people can make services on top of.

Trying to win a market that way. If only one popular site starts to use it, -- you might be getting some network effect out of it.

I think it was a better level to work on. Let others help with the network.

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