7 ms·
Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner
- acangiano 13y agoIt'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.
- tylermac1 13y agoThe best customer service I've ever gotten was as a direct result of complaining on Twitter. Most companies care tremendously about their public image but most have yet to get that care to their dedicated customer service lines.
- owenwil 13y agoMost of these companies are terrified of SEO probably. There's been a number of cases in the past where a customer's complaint would show up on the first page of results for a company on Google. Once or twice those blogs have even shown up before the official results for something that completely blew up. It could cost these companies a lot more once it's out in the open.
- wpietri 13y agoI 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 13y ago>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
- timhaines 13y agoNo, Naoki isn't a writer at thenextweb.com. The may have republished his own blog post from medium.
- tolmasky 13y agoIt's more leveled than before, not (anywhere close to) fully leveled yet, but blogging is playing a positive role not negative (in my opinion).
- baddox 13y agoRight, and before the rise of social media, the Chinese kid couldn't have drawn attention from a popular blog, and also wouldn't have been able to do anything else. The rise of social media obviously doesn't come close to solving anything, but it's strictly an improvement.
- User8712 13y agoThe 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.
- bredren 13y agoIt has, which is great for consumers in cases with these where there is merit. It also means it is easier for anyone to unjustly defame or disrupt the perception of an individual or organization. As per http://boingboing.net/2014/02/25/nsa-and-gchqs-dirty-tricking.html http://boingboing.net/2014/02/25/nsa-and-gchqs-dirty-trickin...
- joezydeco 13y agoYou mean blog + viral traction. There are lots of blogs full of unanswered complaints.
- __pThrow 13y agoIt's not foolproof. What's more foolproof is a big platform, huge megaphone, and lots of social amplification. Lots of blogger complaints, twitter campaigns have gone nowhere.
- danielha 13y agoI don't see how this is sad.
- AngrySkillzz 13y agoI think he means it's sad that @N wasn't able to resolve it through customer support channels at Twitter, GoDaddy, or PayPal.
- pjc50 13y agoPlenty of big online companies either try hard to be uncontactable (google!) or will simply have their first line support tell you that it's your own fault and nothing can be done.
- mathattack 13y agoIt's always been this way. Being a squeaky wheel or someone in power has always been a way to get better service. (Or mortgage rates, or whatever) The web has empowered the squeaky wheels. You could say it's a shame that customer service is awful, but it's expensive to provide universally good service, so many companies opt to just deal with the fallout. Not everyone can be Tiffany's.
- murtali 13y agoI 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 13y agoHe 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
- zeckalpha 13y agoThe 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.
- Shank 13y agoI would argue that it is, considering that it was in the press for a little less than a month before this happened. See: https://medium.com/cyber-security/24eb09e026dd https://medium.com/cyber-security/24eb09e026dd
- owenwil 13y agoTwitter never responded to publicly, nor did they actually or take action for well over a month. From @N's feed, it seems that he got it back himself somehow, too. I don't see why it's not accurate.
- mmanfrin 13y ago"finally" implies that Twitter was too slow in reacting to this Were they not?
- eli 13y agoThat's subjective.
- russell_h 13y agoIsn't the "happy ending" part subjective too?
- mtinkerhess 13y ago"Happy ending" at least is editorializing by the article's author instead of by whoever posted the link.
- jamesbritt 13y agoYes, but it's part of the original title (and a POV of the article itself), not a subjective addition on the part of link submitter.
- smackfu 13y agoInteresting. Just a couple of days ago it had some spammy seeming name, instead of not existing like it had for the previous few weeks.
- istvanp 13y agoIt's nice that Twitter merged @N_IS_STOLEN with his original @N account.
- dangrossman 13y agoYou 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 13y agoWas his prior history as @N already lost at that point?
- dangrossman 13y agoHis 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 13y agoMakes sense, thanks.
- eieio 13y agoI had no idea that Twitter could do that(or that, apparently, you can just change your Twitter handle) and so it caused me to read his Twitter[1] as though the thief had decided to mock either twitter or @N_IS_STOLEN by tweeting lots of things about trying to get @N back to its rightful owner. It was actually pretty entertaining. [1] Really?
- jamesaguilar 13y agoDoes anyone know: what was the account used for in the mean time?
- andrewfong 13y agoWhat 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.
- KamiCrit 13y agoYou see now this is news!
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago"jon18231 reclaims his right nickname, jon18230!"
- kcbanner 13y agoNow he can sell it for $50,000
- cysun 13y agoGiven how it all got out in the media I think he can sell it for twice the price.
- photorized 13y agoThis 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 13y agoThat's pretty strange. Did you contact Twitter?
- photorized 13y agoNot yet. I am not even mad etc.
- sp332 13y agoYou should probably tell them, so at least they know how often this kind of thing happens.
- joe5150 13y agoIt's a ha'nted Twitter account quite obviously.
- photorized 13y agoThat's the impression I got. I ended up using the renamed one, after renaming it once again from @tweetcoin1 to @usetweetcoin.
- kmfrk 13y agoIt's less than a fortnight short of 1,000 days ago, since people began criticizing Twitter for this behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2646979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2646979.
- watermarkcamera 13y agoI don't know this means @N!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ch 13y agohttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security) I don't know why but this comment makes me feel old. I wonder if it would make Kevin Mitnick feel the same.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- stiles 13y agoIs this honestly the first time you are hearing the term social engineering? If it is, I don't think you will be able to claim that on a resume since you probably haven't practiced it much.
- gnicholas 13y agoI believe this is called a "happy @N-ding".
- quackerhacker 13y agoIn 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
- Frostbeard 13y agoI'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.
- adnam 13y agoThank goodness, now I can sleep easy again.
- jbinto 13y agoIt 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.