For the record, I spoke to this reporter for a couple hours, and even had him tell me exactly how he got comex's name (which I did not actually know).
He plays it up in that quote from his article, but it turns out getting the name was /trivial/: comex had a public Facebook account, in his real name, using one of his standard usernames. It is actually likely that he got the name before he even realized it was supposed to be "secret".
In fact, I even joked "fair enough; you know, I've never actually looked, but for all I know his personal domain name is registered to his home address by his mother or something": it turns out it literally is.
(It should also be noted that comex has agreed to talk to reporters before, such as for an article published by Reuters.)
His name also shows up in a few of his GitHub repositories, so it's not like they used illegitimate tactics to uncover his real identity that was already somewhat public.
Forbes shouldn't be chastised over releasing his name, and anyone who thinks that blackmail or anything of the sort played a role is just being silly.
Yes, but it's the same thing when the FBI checks Facebook trivially. People still seem to have a problem with them doing any sort of searching via social networking.
He plays it up in that quote from his article, but it turns out getting the name was /trivial/: comex had a public Facebook account, in his real name, using one of his standard usernames. It is actually likely that he got the name before he even realized it was supposed to be "secret".
In fact, I even joked "fair enough; you know, I've never actually looked, but for all I know his personal domain name is registered to his home address by his mother or something": it turns out it literally is.
(It should also be noted that comex has agreed to talk to reporters before, such as for an article published by Reuters.)