Naoki Hiroshima is a social app developer, who was recently tricked into giving up his Twitter handle, @N. It's a very sought-after handle, which could have landed Hiroshima $50,000 if he were willing to let it go for a price. Due to his willingness to keep the handle, one hacker took it upon himself to blackmail Hiroshima in hopes to take ownership of @N.
Hiroshima took to the blogging site, Medium to share his story that could very well be seen as something out of a Hollywood movie script.
According to Hiroshima, the hacker masqueraded as a Paypal employee, after which he tricked a Paypal customer service representative into revealing the last four digits of Hiroshima's credit card. After getting a hold of the credit card number, the hacker then proceeded to take control of Hiroshima's GoDaddy and PayPal account.
The hacker then chose to hold Hiroshima's accounts hostage in hopes to acquire the famed @N Twitter handle. Hiroshima scored this Twitter handle 7 yeas ago, which was soon after Twitter launched.
In a blog post on Wednesday, PayPal issued a full denial saying, "We have carefully reviewed our records and can confirm that there was a failed attempt made to gain this customer's information by contacting PayPal." Furthermore, the company said it did not give up personal information, credit card details, and final financial information related to the account of Hiroshima.
However, Paypal did specify that it would reach out to Hiroshima to see if there is any way it could help him.
"We are personally reaching out to the customer to see if we can assist him in any way," said Paypal.
No one is exactly sure what had happened, but it is quite clear that something sinister is going on and Paypal and GoDaddy are not talking about it.
We understand that after acquiring the final four digits of Hiroshima's PayPal account, the hacker went to GoDaddy with the intention of accessing Hiroshima's account. However, before he could do so, he would need to provide the last six numbers. He only had four, but GoDaddy allowed him to keep on trying until he finally managed to break in.
"It's hard to decide what's more shocking, the fact that PayPal gave the attacker the last four digits of my credit card number over the phone, or that GoDaddy accepted it as verification," Hiroshima said.
As for the Twitter handle @N, it was closed down by the hacker, but only for a short while as Twitter came along to suspend the account, while Hiroshima on the other hand has switched to a new handle called @N_is_stolen. We're not sure if this will be his Twitter handle from now on, but the way things have been going, Hiroshima may never get a hold of @N ever again.
