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.
How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
81–90 of 394 posts
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Someone offered him 50 grand for it, and he turned them down. I would be surprised if he hadn't considered it at that point, if not previously.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#83What was up with the part with the facebook message? Why would the attacker tip him off rather than just take what he came for? Or did I read that wrong?
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#84Who are people's current favorite domain registrars? I've been with name.com for the last year or so and have been happy, but I'm always curios to hear from others.
http://hover.com is my go to for domains
I use them as well, but they still have not added two-factor authentication. There's a feature request dated 2011 for it.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#85Interesting 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.
They don't have much to lose reputation-wise...
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've been actively using the account for other purpose than tweeting, and had a vague plan to start using it for tweeting again. Should I have mentioned the plan publicly so that the attacker would have refrained from blackmailing me? I don't think so.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#87I don't understand why Twitter doesn't have the standard 30 day wait period on handle changes that most sites have. For a while it was a standard to not let old usernames be available until 30/60/90 days after a change, so that in the event that this kind of thing happened, it could be reclaimed with ease as soon as the GoDaddy account is in his possession.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#88If the author is reading, did you end up getting back your @n username? If so, did you simply go to Twitter and explain to them the whole story?
Nope. A week ago when I explained the situation, Twitter seemed to think I just gave it up, willingly or not.
Man that sucks, sorry to hear it. I guess on the bright side, you didn't have your entire online identity destroyed which was possible given the attacker had your email.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#89That reminds me, a few months ago I had a weird Twitter experience. Someone gained access to my rarely used Twitter account @smartician and started posting spam. Somehow Twitter noticed, reset the password and notified me via email. I have no idea how that was possible.
Re: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
#90Earlier 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 :/
While sympathetic - I'm also slightly amused at your twisted view about twitter name/account "ownership"…
Just how much of the "real world" law you're alluding to by using the term "ownership" do you suppose applies to Twitter handles? (or Gmail addresses, or Facebook pages, or even domain names?)