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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

#351

Post by rwallace »

harryh wrote: post #76
bushido wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better analogy would be an owner of a valuable piece of property who wasn't putting it to good use. So if you were not putting your backyard to good use you would not feel too bad if your neighbors decided to encroach on it?

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…

As far as I'm concerned, yes, it would be okay for someone to start living there, and some jurisdictions at some times have had squatting laws that recognize this. Land is essentially a public resource; unlike manufactured goods, I can't create land, and if I claim ownership of a piece thereof, I can only do so by denying use of it to everyone else; the "it's mine and I'll do anything I want with it" property rights that correctly apply to manufactured goods, don't entirely apply to land. A case could be made for saying the same thing of public namespaces.

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

#353

Post by squigs25 »

eridius wrote: post #180
ivanbrussik wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think it was 4.

GoDaddy requires 6 digits, but the agent let the attacker guess 2 of them (repeatedly, until he got it right). That's truly awful.

Sometimes you're forced to use godaddy.

I wanted a domain that had been registered with godaddy, so I needed to backorder it through them, and register it through them.

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

#354

Post by Osiris »

Osiris wrote: post #193
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…

When a customer calls into the GoDaddy call center, they are supposed to provide a 4 digit pin in order to gain access to their account. I don't work in that department, but I'll forward the page to the CEO and make sure it gets read and addressed.

UPDATE: GoDaddy's CEO let me know that they contacted the affected party, the internal security team, and Twitter security. I'd hope they are also looking at policy/training changes for customer support, but that wasn't mentioned.

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

#355

Post by nroach »

pyk wrote: post #81

No lawyer? Any reason why none was mentioned? Extortion is serious federal crime (across state lines, multiple companies, even clear admission of guilt). At the least it would get GoDaddy's attention vs. just asking nicely.

I was surprised that the victim didn't get an attorney involved. This is an example of a situation in which a court could very swiftly (same day, usually) issue an injunction to preserve the status quo while the merits get sorted out in court. Most domain providers I've dealt with will freeze a disputed account pending legal resolution of ownership, which can be decided via the court system or a WIPO arbitration.

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

#356

Post by benatkin »

xauronx wrote: post #285
benatkin wrote: post #100

It's sad, but twitter's not transferring it back in a week's time gives me more confidence in twitter, not less. There isn't any evidence of the stealing of the domain names and the extortion available besides OP's copies of the email messages and information that GoDaddy won't provide. With the value twitter ID has, twitter shouldn't do anything without clear evidence. He might have been able to get it back if it wa…

I was thinking how witty that would be if THIS was the actually hacker, and he was using us to create a shitstorm in order to rush Twitter into giving him the account. I'm sure there is sufficient data to support that he was the original owner though.

True. I believe the original poster, no question about that. I hope twitter reverses it, but I can see why they haven't yet.

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

#357

Post by pessimizer »

harel wrote: post #315
brador wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In which case, once I return in the afternoon I will be entitled to shoot whomever is there for trying to steal my home. I'll be 'naturalisticaly' defending it. Sounds like a great way to run a society. I better make sure I have a bigger gun than the rest then. (edit-language)

Is shooting people your first go-to for defense? I prefer arguments and evidence presented to institutions who have both been given permission to shoot people and are willing to do it on my behalf pending their judgements of my arguments and evidence.

Of course, if the institution's judgement is that people can take things that I'm not using at that exact moment, and it is not interested in intervening, then it's not my 'right' to leave my house alone for the day.

Turns out my rights are entirely dependent on the amount of guns I can bring to bear vs. the amount of guns somebody challenging my claim can bring to bear.

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

#359

Post by talmand »

aaronem wrote: post #348
talmand wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my time working on websites for a retail company the imagery of the credit cards accepted were considered important. They would even be on pages that just mentioned taking payments before you get to the actual input page. One reasoning is that it is a sort of reassurance, much like the stickers you see on doors of retail locations that show which cards they accept. It's a reassurance in the idea that if you're…

All of what you say is true, but I was referring to a dropdown or radio button set for choice of card type, and not the card type images themselves, which I always included unless the client preferred otherwise -- something I don't remember ever happening, now I think back.

Images were preferred, but the names themselves would suffice for much the same reasons.

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

#360

Post by louthy »

mseebach wrote: post #345
owens99 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds relatively easy to verify, as the guy seems to be well known and the founder of an SF-based startup.

It's not about his identity, it's about the legitimacy of his claim to the account. Just for the record, I have no reason to believe he's saying anything less than the truth - but I can't fault Twitter for basically presuming malice until they have conclusively documented the opposite.

Exactly, they're doing the opposite of what PayPal and GoDaddy did, which is correct.
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