I found it interesting how open the attacker was about how they did it.
He probably wanted to brag to someone about how he did it. It just so happened to be his victim.
How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
51–60 of 394 posts
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya, the fact that he tweeted a grand total of twice in 2013 (see https://twitter.com/N_is_stolen ) makes me have a little less sympathy.
If someone had a Mercedes and only drove it twice a year, is it OK for someone to steal it?
No. But I'd feel less bad for that person than someone who drove their Mercedes every day and had it stolen.
Also, a Mercedes and a twitter handle (or domain name) aren't exactly the same thing as a twitter handle is a unique owner of a particular pice of the namespace.
A better analogy would be an owner of a valuable piece of property who wasn't putting it to good use.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
He said he wasn't using it much. Thus, isn't he basically a squatter?
Twitter's official policy is that an account becomes inactive after 6 months - at that point, they reserve the right to release the account (in practice they rarely do this, though - there isn't an automated job releasing inactive accounts or anything) https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive-account-... @N (now @N_is_stolen)'s last post was 4 months ago, so he is still technically considered an active use…
Activity doesn't require the creation of a tweet though. There are plenty of active accounts where the users just read.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya, the fact that he tweeted a grand total of twice in 2013 (see https://twitter.com/N_is_stolen ) makes me have a little less sympathy.
I'm a very casual and infrequent tweeter, and I can't fathom how that makes my username 'up for grabs'. Sorry you have such a twisted view of username ownership :/
Oh it definitely doesn't make your username 'up for grabs'. What happened to you totally sucks and I hope you manage to get your account back.
That being said if you're not actually going to use your account you might want to at least consider giving it to someone who would put it to more active use. Just a thought.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
He said he wasn't using it much. Thus, isn't he basically a squatter?
Ya, the fact that he tweeted a grand total of twice in 2013 (see https://twitter.com/N_is_stolen ) makes me have a little less sympathy.
To use Twitter, one does not have to tweet.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#56Seems like Twitter could easily verify the story based on their own logs and then restore access to his N account. He doesn't mention pursuing that, though.
He said he wasn't using it much. Thus, isn't he basically a squatter?
It depends. I know of several people who have Twitter accounts so they can follow other people, but they don't tweet much (or at all) themselves.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya, the fact that he tweeted a grand total of twice in 2013 (see https://twitter.com/N_is_stolen ) makes me have a little less sympathy.
To use Twitter, one does not have to tweet.
If you're not interested in creating tweets then you don't really need to be taking up such a valuable piece of the namespace.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#58This is a scary story! Focusing on the Twitter handle sale part: I have the twitter handle @jetsetter, and have been offered multiple thousands of dollars for it (guess who!). Unfortunately, selling a twitter handle is against TOS. Only @israel has been officially allowed to transfer hands for money, that I'm aware of. So trying to broker the sale of a twitter account can allow the buyer to report your 'behavior' to…
Unless you are talking on the actual twitter account about selling it you should be fine.
If not I could just make fake email logs and report you.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#59Ditch GoDaddy - They are a terrible company. Also considering closing my paypal account now.
I'm consistently surprised at the number of complaints against GoDaddy. They are a horrible company! You get what you pay for...
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#60Interesting that GoDaddy does not keep an audit trail for account detail changes that might help detect malicious activity. I guess they'll rather lose customers and reputation than do this.