I have no sympathy for someone who still uses GoDaddy after their CEO publicly supported SOPA and was on an elephant killing safari.
Increasingly, it seems like the weakest link in our personal security is outside of our control. You can be as diligent and ingenious as you like about protecting your own confidential information, but if that same information is stored by someone else who stores your data in plaintext, hosts malware on their PoS terminals, downloads your records to a laptop and leaves it on the backseat of their car, etc. etc. you’re screwed.
Attempts to resolve the situation are then typically frustrated by the “Too big to care” effect that seems to cling to large organizations.
If they believe his story, can’t Twitter just give his handle back to him? If it’s extortion, why not call the police or FBI? Or is this just another Internet hoax?
Honestly, this is GoDaddy’s fault, and it’s not fair to blame PayPal. The last four digits (and first six digits) of your credit card number don’t have to be held securely under PCI standards and shouldn’t be used to identify anyone. GoDaddy should never have adopted a policy of using last four digits for account recovery – they could use digits 9 through 12 if they wanted (for 16-digit card numbers).
While I have no love for GoDaddy (I was already on the fence with their weird sexist ads, and the SOPA thing put it over the top for me, so I switched out to a different company), I don’t think it’s really fair to say “Hah, tough luck dummy, you get what you deserve” just because he uses a registrar with a crappy CEO.
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