> (He agreed to speak after Forbes‘ poking around Twitter, > Facebook and the Brown Directory revealed his name.) B
this is the most important part of the story
this is the most important part of the story
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.)
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.