
Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner - owenwil
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/02/26/happy-ending-n-restored-rightful-owner/
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acangiano
It's interesting (and perhaps sad) how these days having a blog in which to
complain, if needed, is one of the most foolproof ways to receive proper
customer care from certain online companies.

~~~
wpietri
I think it's great. It's not like companies weren't shafting people before;
we're just hearing about it more. For decades, companies with money had a big
communications advantage. The web has re-leveled the playing field.

~~~
a_bonobo
>The web has re-leveled the playing field.

Can't say I agree - the original owner of @N has a huge potential reach since
he's a writer for medium, and knows how to structure and write an article so
that people root for him instead of Twitter.

If @N would've belonged to some Chinese kid, that kid could have written on
his unknown blog in Chinese and no-one would have cared.

Edit: Mixed up nextweb.com/medium writers

~~~
User8712
The blog is meaningless, you could be a nobody. If I buy a block of cheese
tomorrow, and you can see a band-aid in the package, half embedded in the
cheese, half hanging out, the internet will go wild. Toss a photo on Reddit
with a _cheesy_ headline, and it'll hit the frontpage, then get reposted all
over the internet. Within a couple of days the company would issue an official
statement, and I'd have copious amounts of free cheese.

It would be a PR nightmare, and they'd be trying to track down the location,
employee, and how their scanner for foreign material didn't pick it up.
Meanwhile, without the internet, I'd call, never be able to reach anyone of
importance, and they'd just apologize and mail me a 50% off coupon.

The internet gives the individual a lot of power, and they can reach millions
overnight thanks to social networks. It also forces the company to handle
damage control ASAP, since their reputation drops a notch with every passing
minute.

~~~
throwaway092834
Let's be fair: Starting out famous is an enormous boon.

At the same time it's possible for nobodies to be heard as well, provided
their message is well presented.

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photorized
This isn't nearly as exciting as the story of @N, but I just had something
strange happen to one of my Twitter accounts, too.

Registered "tweetcoin" handle awhile back for one of the projects I am working
on, and posted on Feb 9 (my single tweet) - "Exciting things in the works" was
my comment:

[https://twitter.com/tweetcoin](https://twitter.com/tweetcoin)

Tried logging in today, couldn't log in. Ended up resetting pwd using my email
account, and the reset link logged me in as 'tweetcoin1' \- that's when I knew
that my Twitter handle had changed from 'tweetcoin' to 'tweetcoin1'.

What's even more bizarre - another tweet appeared under that account. It was
dated April 2012, and it simply said:

"This isn't your account."

~~~
tagabek
That's pretty strange. Did you contact Twitter?

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photorized
Not yet. I am not even mad etc.

~~~
sp332
You should probably tell them, so at least they know how often this kind of
thing happens.

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gnicholas
I believe this is called a "happy @N-ding".

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zeckalpha
The title is actually "Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful
owner".

"finally" implies that Twitter was too slow in reacting to this. Please don't
editorialize.

~~~
mmanfrin

        "finally" implies that Twitter was too slow in reacting to this
    

Were they not?

~~~
eli
That's subjective.

~~~
russell_h
Isn't the "happy ending" part subjective too?

~~~
mtinkerhess
"Happy ending" at least is editorializing by the article's author instead of
by whoever posted the link.

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andrewfong
What I want to know is: what was the attacker thinking? A Twitter handle is
something that Twitter can easily return to its rightful owner -- it's not
exactly something you can steal. I could see some scenario where the attacker
would use some information to extort Naoki into not telling Twitter, but that
didn't appear to happen here.

~~~
alex_doom
Selling it

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Frostbeard
I've seen a few of these stories that assert Hiroshima lost his account. That
misrepresents things a little. What actually happened is he was blackmailed
into changing his username; his Twitter account, including his tweet history,
followers and everything besides the single-character username, seems to have
remained intact and under his control throughout the ordeal.

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murtali
I hope Mr.Hiroshima writes a blog post detailing what happened. I'm
particularly interested in whether Twitter has implemented any changes in the
way they handle high value handles/or all to prevent others who've experienced
this with their Twitter account.

~~~
eieio
He did write a pretty nice article about the process of the handle being
stolen[1], but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're talking about.

I, too, would like to hear about the process of actually getting the handle
back. Apparently I don't read HN enough(something I thought was impossible) so
this story is news to me as of this evening.

[1] [https://medium.com/cyber-security/24eb09e026dd](https://medium.com/cyber-
security/24eb09e026dd)

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quackerhacker
In case anyone wants to see the old discussion we had here on HN (before it
was restored 27 days ago):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7141532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7141532)

------
istvanp
It's nice that Twitter merged @N_IS_STOLEN with his original @N account.

~~~
dangrossman
You can rename your Twitter account to any unused handle. All they had to do
was delete or rename the account holding @N, then he renamed his @N_IS_STOLEN
account to @N. No merging was required.

~~~
jcoder
Was his prior history as @N already lost at that point?

~~~
dangrossman
His history as @N was never lost; you can see all 15000 tweets. He voluntarily
(under coercion) renamed @N to @N_IS_STOLEN. All his tweets/history stayed
with his account, now named @N_IS_STOLEN. The other guy then registered or
renamed an account as @N, as anyone in the world could've done at the time. On
Twitter, your handle is just an editable property of your account like your
profile picture or your e-mail address.

~~~
jcoder
Makes sense, thanks.

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jbinto
It also helps having inside contacts at Google, Twitter or Facebook.

"So I rang my friend at Twitter" tends to be a common theme in these blog
posts. I believe this was the case here too.

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kcbanner
Now he can sell it for $50,000

~~~
cysun
Given how it all got out in the media I think he can sell it for twice the
price.

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jamesaguilar
Does anyone know: what was the account used for in the mean time?

~~~
owenwil
Pretty much nothing, it sat dormant the whole time that Twitter didn't do
anything. It briefly had the name of some random news site in the bio but
that's it.

~~~
tannerc
I was under the impression that Twitter temporarily suspended the account
while they sorted things out?

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smackfu
Interesting. Just a couple of days ago it had some spammy seeming name,
instead of not existing like it had for the previous few weeks.

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adnam
Thank goodness, now I can sleep easy again.

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watermarkcamera
I don't know this means @N!

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KamiCrit
You see now this is news!

~~~
mattgreenrocks
"jon18231 reclaims his right nickname, jon18230!"

