Hey all,
Just a quick update to let you guys know that I was contacted today by a friendly Twitter support person called Tiger who is assisting me to regain my @anth0dotcom account. Looking forward to hearing from Tiger soon. I have provided Twitter with information for verification purposes.
*fingers crossed*
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I remain locked out of my Twitter account. Feel quite catatonic at the moment.
As you can see there have not been any further posts on my Twitter page since it was hacked on October 9th at 9.44pm…. 
I really hope that the Twitter support ticket that I filled out will be replied soon.
Will keep you guys updated as I hear the news.
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I meant to write a post about Twitter in a few days time – specifically how I managed to accumulate 15,000 followers in the space of about a year without promoting any service or any free ebook or any other gimmick. Unfortunately, this is not to be as I found out today that my Twitter account has been hacked. This is in part due to a compromise on my own system, but also due to a flaw in the twitter user account update system. I will explain below.
As you all know, My twitter account is @Anth0DotCom. If you head to that username ( link here ) you can see that that page actually links to this blog. It still does, as the person who hijacked/hacked my account has not changed any of the details. Heck, its still using the same background as this blog.
This is what happened. I was adding quite a few friends yesterday, and then went to bed. I woke up several hours later only to find that I could not log into my account. I then tried to reset the password only to get this error message.
I then tried to use my username anth0dotcom to obtain a password reset. This is what I got.
Obviously then, someone has changed the email associated with my account. Still though, I was quite confused. How could they have changed my account email if I had not received any confirmation email in my email account asking for permission to change said account? Most basic services i.e. Forums based on vB, social networking sites etc, usually send a confirmation email stating that a user has requested that an email associated with an account be changed and to authorize said change. I logged into my account, and did not see any such email. Instead all I had received was this.
That took me to a twitter help page that told me to change my password in the event my account got compromised. Obviously since the email had already been changed, I could not log into the account to change said password.
The flaw is this: The email account associated with most online services is the second layer of defense for login purposes. People changing the email account associated with their Facebook or Twitter or Myspace or etc etc etc should first get a confirmation email to the OLD email associated with the service. People who have two different passwords (1 for their email account, 1 for e.g. Twitter) would still be protected as a hacker in possession of a hacked twitter account will not be able to change the email associated with the account easily. The true owner of the site will also be able to log into their email account to recover their account more easily.
I tested this out by creating a new account, then by changing the email in the account to a new email. I did not get a confirmation to ALLOW the changeover to the new address, only an email that it had already been changed.
In any case, I want everyone to note that my account has been hacked.
I am making this blog post and I will create a new twitter account to tweet this blog post to @ev and @biz so that they are aware of this issue. I will forward this article to as many social bookmarking services, and blogs out there in the hopes that more people become aware of this issue.
I also hope that this will prove to the boys @ Twitter that I am the owner of @Anth0DotCom
I can provide information to authenticate my account. i.e. Real World Information and authentication.
I sincerely hope that @ev or @biz or at least someone from the Twitter Accounts team will be able to get in contact with me.
You can contact me directly at colonelmustard28 (at) gmail (dot) com or at +353857349385
(That was the original email associated with my twitter account).
Update: I have made a secondary Twitter account @realanth0 and will forward all this information to @ev and @biz
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How time flies. I sincerely did not expect to take a whole year to make my second blog post. However, things have happened in the meantime. Loads of things. Exams got in the way. The game got in the way. Life got in the way.
I won some, and lost some. But I am still going to keep at it.
Starting today I will try to keep this blog updated with new content as often as possible. Lets see how long it will take to get noticed by the big G.
Peace out.
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Before Continuing – Please Read this disclaimer: I do not in any way endorse piracy. This post serves as a guide for people to obtain digital versions of books that they already own.
Anyway, on with the show. This method of obtaining books was around before the days of torrents, and prior to even p2p services such as napster were founded. It has been around and been largely unmolested due to the fact that its not very accessible. That is what I intend to show you in this guide. Why would you need to use this? Well for one thing, the collection of books available is much, MUCH larger than present at any other p2p network. They cover a huge area of books. Everything from obscure fantasy books to highly technical ruby on rails manuals. I have yet to be unable to find a book that I have been searching for.
Click on any of the images to see a larger clearer version of it.
1. Head to mIRC and download and install their client. We will use mIRC for this guide but you can just as easily use x-chat or any other open source IRC client.
2. Once you open it up you’re going to have to set up some of the basic settings. Check out the screenies below to ensure that your settings are the same.
Notes: I find that the best server that hosts the books is usually #bookz on Undernet. However, due to its popularity there will be times when you can’t get into that particular server/chat room. So here are some alternative servers for you to enter and try:
Comics
irc://irc.maddshark.net:6667/mw-bookz
irc://irc.dejatoons.net:6667/comic-scans
Ebooks
irc://irc.irchighway.net/:6667/ebooks
irc://irc.atomic-irc.net:6667/ebooks
irc://irc.undernet.org:6667/bookz
irc://irc.nullus.net:6667/bookwarez
irc://irc.team-scorpio.com/scorpio-e-bookz
Audio Books
irc://irc.undernet.org:6667/audiobooks
Study Stuff
3. Connect to one of the servers. For the purposes of this post, I’ll connect to undernet. Wait for the server to connect and you’ll be presented with a menu with all the channels. Type in your particular channel (in this case #ebookz) as shown below.
4. Now the channel loads up and you will be able to see many other people searching for and downloading items.
5. Use the @find command followed by the title of the book that you are searching for… for e.g. @find Michael Crichton, @find Dan Brown, @find Lonely Planet Guides. Certain channels prefer the @search command instead. E.g. @search Patrick Rothfuss – The Name Of The Wind.
6. Once the command has been set, be prepared for a flood of messages depending on how famous the book is. I have yet to not find a book I have been searching for though…. Yould should see a whole load of messages showing up in the main channel window itself as well as private messages from the various people hosting the aforementioned books. As you can see in the image below, “pera”, “deranged”, “ook” etc are private messages and “EBrarian” has a link showing up in the main channel window. (Click to see larger version)
7. Next, all you have to do is cut and paste the responses you received in the main chat window. For example, in the example below I am about to download the entirely uninpressive Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Yes I actually own a copy of the book, but in my defense I got it as a gift! It is worthwhile to to note that the “!” (exclamation mark) acts as the trigger to request the download. Also note that you can search by book title, category, author etc etc etc. You can also choose the type of extension (type of document) you would like e.g. .doc/.pdf/.pdb/.prc/.pub . Next you wait for the download to begin. (Click to see larger version)
8. Select a download location. The default location is within the C:\Program Files\mIRC\downloads folder. And watch your download speed into your computer.
9. Open and enjoy. 
I hope that you guys have enjoyed this post. Subscribe to my full RSS Feed and look forward to my next post… how to get all your books onto your iPhone/iPod to create a complete library…. all for FREE!
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