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arzel

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Fun fact that I’ll shorten: (vine creators) all met at 1600 Vine in Los Angeles with Twitter execs. Creators asked Twitter for money because _we_ we’re getting offers by competitors to become exclusive to their platform, Twitter denied paying up, and all creators moved to other platforms. It only took a few months for the user base to die out.

Ok, I have had more or less a similar experience.

Couldn’t verify my identity(?) > Upload a photo of ID.

Couldn’t verify street address(?) > Upload a utility bill.

Couldn’t verify business street address(?) > Upload a utility bill.

Couldn’t verify my EIN(?) > Upload IRS EIN document.

The list goes on.. process took over a week. Eventually I was approved, just an insanely tedious process.

The information you obtain from vulnerabilities like these are used to obtain “original” social media accounts, and are then sold for a lot of money. To define what “original” is, take for instance “@shawn” on Instagram or Twitter. When these people target celebrities, they are mainly looking for a laugh and believe their “method” is about to be patched.

For example, T-Mobile and Verizon vulnerabilities are used to SIM swap and get around 2FA on instagram or twitter. Usually, they first try to find an employee who works at the store and has access to the database, before going through all the trouble of finding a vuln.

This has been an “underground” space for quite some time, but is slowly coming to light.

Source: I use to be in this space and made so much money off original usernames. To give you an idea of what a username goes for, I sold the Instagram @b*ss for $20,000.

i always enjoy reading these articles, because others like myself who have had their startups acquired at a young age are beating the stigma.

but i feel as though in this day of age there’s so many “companies” who claim to be “startups.” sure, they may have the experience, just not the capital.. and with that it completely changes everything.

anyways i’m 21 and had a “startup” (an app) acquired at 18. now back in school, i can understand the articles perspective. i’m only 21 and i feel like i only really have 10% of the knowledge, compared to someone who is 40 and who has so much more experience then me.