Whenever I join a social media site or start an online video game, it always goes like this.

I load up the webpage, click sign up, and then it asks me the question.

What username do you want to be known as?

And it never goes as planned. Maybe my first choice is Batman.

So I try to make that my username, but the site says that username already exists.

How about Batman1989?

Definitely not Batman1989.

So I might try Admin.

Nope, that's not available either. And then I might try Jack. Nope. Papa Shell. Nope.

C-3PO-N. Nope. Karate Skid. Nope. And before I know it, I'm left with some goofy name like

Pumpkin Spice Snorder because it feels like that's all that's left.

It's really hard to find a good username. That's not already taken.

Especially on places like Twitter and Instagram where there are hundreds of millions of people already registered there.

They have good names already.

But what if there was a way to just steal an account name that you really wanted?

Surely that would make it a lot easier, right?

These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

I'm Jack Recyder.

This is Dark Net Diaries.

Support for this show comes from Black Hills Information Security.

This is a company that does penetration testing, incident response, and active monitoring to help keep businesses secure.

I know a few people who work over there and I could vouch they do very good work.

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