Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/02/26/happy-ending-n-restored-rightful-owner/

by owenwil • 12 years ago

291 69 12 years ago

acangiano• 12 years ago

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.

tylermac1• 12 years ago

The 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.

owenwil3• 12 years ago

Most 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• 12 years ago

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_bonobo2• 12 years 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

bredren• 12 years ago

It 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-trickin...

joezydeco• 12 years ago

You mean blog + viral traction. There are lots of blogs full of unanswered complaints.

__pThrow• 12 years ago

It'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• 12 years ago

I don't see how this is sad.

AngrySkillzz• 12 years ago

I think he means it's sad that @N wasn't able to resolve it through customer support channels at Twitter, GoDaddy, or PayPal.

pjc50• 12 years ago

Plenty 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• 12 years ago

It'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• 12 years ago

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.

eieio2• 12 years ago

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

zeckalpha3• 12 years ago

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.

Shank• 12 years ago

I 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

owenwil3• 12 years ago

Twitter 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• 12 years ago

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

Were they not?

eli• 12 years ago

That's subjective.

adamdavis• 12 years ago

The text in the article certainly expresses they felt Twitter took a long time.

aDevilInMe• 12 years ago

https://twitter.com/N/status/438431953650339840

albedoa3• 12 years ago

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

No comment on the use of "rightful" or "happy"? It implies that he had a valid claim to the handle and the outcome was good. Why do these pass your test?

doughj3• 12 years ago

Because they are in the title in the original article. On HN, titles should generally be used as they stand originally and not modified, which is what zeckalpha means when he or she refers to editorializing.

smackfu• 12 years ago

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.

istvanp• 12 years ago

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

dangrossman2• 12 years ago

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.

jcoder2• 12 years ago

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

eieio2• 12 years ago

I 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• 12 years ago

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

owenwil3• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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

andrewfong• 12 years ago

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.

zeckalpha3• 12 years ago

So is a domain name, arguably.

alex_doom• 12 years ago

Selling it

KamiCrit• 12 years ago

You see now this is news!

mattgreenrocks• 12 years ago

"jon18231 reclaims his right nickname, jon18230!"

kcbanner• 12 years ago

Now he can sell it for $50,000

cysun• 12 years ago

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

photorized3• 12 years ago

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

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• 12 years ago

That's pretty strange. Did you contact Twitter?

photorized3• 12 years ago

Not yet. I am not even mad etc.

joe5150• 12 years ago

It's a ha'nted Twitter account quite obviously.

photorized3• 12 years ago

That's the impression I got. I ended up using the renamed one, after renaming it once again from @tweetcoin1 to @usetweetcoin.

kmfrk• 12 years ago

It'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.

watermarkcamera• 12 years ago

I don't know this means @N!

gnicholas• 12 years ago

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

quackerhacker• 12 years ago

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

Frostbeard• 12 years ago

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.

adnam• 12 years ago

Thank goodness, now I can sleep easy again.

jbinto• 12 years ago

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.

Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner

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