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THE OWNERS of the world's rarest Twitter names have been offered tens of thousands of dollars to sell their digital monikers, despite the platform banning the controversial practice.

Germany-based IT specialist Mark Douglass, known as "@m" on the site, told The Sun he turned down $15,000 for his beloved ID.

"Honestly, I just can't quite part with it," he said. "First come, first served, I guess."

Meanwhile photographer Gene X. Hwang (or @x) said no to multiple offers ranging between 10k-40k because he didn't think they were legit.

"I Really didn't entertain any of them seriously," he said.

Both users claimed they were approached by individuals and businesses eager to snap up their precious handles – but what is it that makes these usernames so valuable?

The answer is intertwined with the history of Twitter, a site that now boasts 330million users, including world leaders, celebs, parody accounts, purveyors of hardcore porn, and tons of fake bots.

Rewind to 2007, and the platform was just beginning to gain traction with techies and early adopters.

And so began the great Twitter username gold rush.

For those unfamiliar with the site, a username on the platform is known as a "handle".

This personal ID starts with the "@" symbol and is used in your profile URL (for example twitter.com/username).

It's also what other users type in to tweet at you and to tag you in posts and pics.

If you were to join Twitter today, you likely wouldn't be able to use your real name as a handle because it was probably taken back in 2007.

That's also when Douglass and Hwang joined the site, quickly grabbing the @m and @x IDs that match their real-life initials.

What they didn't realise was how sought-after the handles would become.

"It is the first letter of my first name, so the choice was a natural one," said Douglass.

He added: "At the time I was very surprised by how many letters of the alphabet were still unused. In retrospect I should have signed up for much of the alphabet and could have been much richer, haha."

Once Twitter blew up, everyone (including corporations, media conglomerates, and celebs) jumped on the bandwagon.

But they quickly found that many names were already taken by what are known as identity squatters.

These are inactive accounts that have nicked a handle and are just sitting on it in the hopes of a payout.

The shady practice is banned on Twitter, as is the sale of a Twitter username.

"Attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension," state the Twitter Rules.

Yet the company also notes that unless the account in question is impersonating you or violating a trademark, it basically can't release the handle to you.

But Twitter has looked the other way in some cases relating to sales of usernames.

The most famous involved comedian Drew Carey (host of the US version of Whose Line is it Anyway?) who donated $1 million to charity for the @Drew account.

And CNN found a way around Twitter's policy by hiring the original owner of the @CNNbrk account as a consultant.

But there are downsides to owning a valuable handle, including the threat of cyberattacks from shady folks seeking to hijack your account.

"Several of us single letter folks have had to deal with [hacking]... but luckily we've all been OK now that some added security measures have been made".

The "security measures" Hwang is referring to include two-factor authentication (an added layer of protection on top of your password, usually in the form of an access code sent to your mobile), which Twitter introduced in 2013, and expanded to support third-party app logins last year.

Resourceful hackers even managed to successfully breach Douglass' other account "@md" just to grab his primary @m handle.

"There was one successful hack of @md about 2 years ago, by someone who was actually interested in @m, but couldn't quite get there," he told The Sun.

"It was a social engineering attack through a hosted email account on one of my web domains.

"They ended up redirecting the mailbox elsewhere and doing a simple Twitter password reset. At the time I didn't have [two-factor-authentication] setup yet for @md - something I changed immediately afterwards."

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Another hack involving a Twitter username worth a reported $50,000 took place in 2014.

Naoki Hiroshima was extorted into handing over his @N handle to a hacker who used a similar method to the one used against Douglass.

He reported the breach to Twitter, which shut down the account and later retrieved it for the worried user.

But even the threat of cyberattacks don't phase frequent tweeters Hwang and Douglass. And the big money offers seem to be the norm for single-letter handle owners.

But they're simply can't bring themselves to ditch those super-short IDs.

"Not interested in parting with @m or @md," reads Douglass' Twitter bio. You can't make it any clearer than that.

The people behind Twitter's rarest usernames

Let's take a look at Twitter's single letter and number usernames and the bios of the people behind the handles:

@a – Andrei Zmievski (Coder, photographer, relentless traveler, beer judge, Russian)

@b – Inactive

@c – Coley Forest (Woodland wanderer and wild forest gardener. Runs on music and photosynthesis)

@d – Inactive

@e –E (here, there and everywhere)

@f – Fred Oliveira (I build things with computers. Friend of the show)

@g – Greg Leding (Ava's dad, @eironside's husband, Fayetteville's state rep. Running for the Arkansas Senate)

@h – Helgi Þorbjörnsson (Principal Infrastructure Architect @mulesoft. Previously @engineyard / @opendeis as Director of Engineering, founded Orchestra.io, public speaker, PEAR dev!)

@i – Page doesn't exist

@j – Juliette Melton (Design research + audience strategy @nytimes. @ideo alum. Filed under NYC, human-centered design, bikes, books, tea)

@k – Kevin Cheng (Dir Prod @Indeed, storyteller, #VR maker, DJ (http://soundcloud.com/kevnull ), product, design. Formerly @IncredibleLabs, @Twitter. Wrote http://seewhatimean.org)

@l – L. That is all. (Go Away. Please. I want to be alone)

@m – Mark Douglass (99.9% of @m mentions are incorrect and I've basically stopped checking them, sorry. Like/RT/Follow ≠ Endorsement. PS: Not interested in parting with @m or @md)

@n – Naoki Hiroshima (I play tennis)

@o – Suspended

@p – paolo i. (things never happened in this order. maybe they never happened at all.)

@q – Ariel Raunstein (Potential Organ Donor Extraordinaire)

@r – Rex Hammock (CEO at Hammock, the customer media & content company (http://Hammock.com ), Creator-helper at http://SmallBusiness.com (@smallbusiness))

@s – Seriously! (¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

@t – Tantek Çelik (Cofounder #indieweb #barcamp @IndieWebCamp @microformats. Working @Mozilla @w3cab @csswg @socialwebwg. Code @Falcon @cassisjs. #write #climb #run #yoga #RESIST)
@u – u (Profile photo courtesy of @emoste. Header photo courtesy of @aus_sweetnam.)

@v – LasCloacasDelEstado (Desde arriba, en la distancia, no cabe duda de que España es un país democrático. Pero, ¿y si hemos estado mirando todo el rato desde el prisma equivocado?)

@w – Walter (exec producer of my life. You are my cast.)

@x – gene x (photographer and friend of lemurs - co-founder of @orangephoto, bike rider, pinball player & beginning slackliner http://orangephotography.com)

@y – Suspended

@z – Zach Brock (CEO @commonnet. Previously: @Square, @pivotallabs. I'm mostly made of water.)

@1 – Suspended

@2 – Suspended

@3 – Blair (Is it Friday yet?)

@4 – 4oto (It's about 1/7 chance that today is Friday.)

@5 – n (WeChat: rrrrrr Email:5201314@hotmail.com)

@6 – Adrián Lamo (#Hacker. State actor. Published #author & #journalist. #Defense. #Cybercrime. #Russia. #China. #Israel. #3 on #CISO Platform's top-100 #security influencers.)

@7 – Suspended

@8 – Suspended

@9 – Page doesn't exist.

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