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How Naoki Hiroshima lost his $50 000 Twitter username

Getting the perfect username is often all about timing. For Naoki Hiroshima the timing was just right when he scored what would become one of the most coveted user names on Twitter, @N. Hiroshima says that he has been offered up to $50 000 to sell his small piece of the web but he had turned all comers down.

In a blog post, by Naoki, he describes how, through a combination of lax security by him and some of the world’s biggest companies, his web domains, email and his Facebook were compromised and taken over by a hacker who then proceeded to extort him for the Twitter handle which he reluctantly handed over.

The story bears a striking resemblance to that of, senior writer for Wired, Mat Honan’s whose entire digital life was wiped out in much the same way. Both Naoki and Mat had their accounts compromised by hackers who used social engineering techniques to glean information from unwitting support staff at Amazon, Apple and PayPal.

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