I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up.

A slightly terrifying account of how Naoki Hiroshima’s Twitter account; @N, was stolen. It’s astounding how one weak link in your digital identity (PayPal in this case) can allow access to everything.

I took the time to turn on two-factor authentication for as many accounts as possible a while back. It does take some time, but I think it’s well worth it. I also moved everything over to iwantmyname months ago, and all of my MX records are (slightly) safer with a TTL of 604800. I still have yet to leave PayPal. Stripe covers a lot of ground for me, but PayPal seems to remain a necessary evil.

Naoki has received an astonishing amount of press for his account; other tales of similar situations arose following his story. I like to hope that Twitter would do something to rectify the situation, but I don’t have too much faith.