[jperras]

I've actually had a (great) username completely blackholed by github. I'm still a bit salty about it.

I had received an email several years ago informing me that it was going to be removed. They gave me the equivalent to a coupon for a free year of the github personal plan as compensation.

To this day it'll tell you that the username is "unavailable" if you try to sign up with it, and the page just 404s.

[asylteltine]

And it’s called?

[charcircuit]

malware is probably the best known case of this

Today the profile just 404s

https://github.com/malware

edit: yep this is his account

[SeenNotHeard]

And Mike Alware is still salty about it.

[emmelaich]

More likely Malcolm Ware?

[bigbillheck]

What was the username?

[jperras]

As charcircuit figured out, the username is/was `malware`. They deactivated it in 2018 without any explanation, and even my contacts at Github at the time couldn't quite figure out why it was happening.

My only thought was that it was during the MSFT acquisition due diligence, and my username was an unfortunate victim of whatever compliance requirements they had to satisfy.

[pests]

Honestly the url does not look good. I can see why they wouldn't want it showing up in logs or across the internet. Maybe it was getting hit by virus scanners or other Internet filtering as well.