How did people get 1 letter names?

[Satoshi]

Title explains it all.

There was an exploit at some point, somebody who remembers better than me should write it down for anyone who is interested.

 

[Satoshi]

From what I know, when Minecraft first released, I'm talking about the first couple days, if not hours, there was an exploit/glitch where users could create 1 letter names and symbols (Some examples are: 8, G, $, help me*). From what I've heard and seen, 'help me' and '$' cannot join online servers as they have invalid characters in and they won't be able to connect.

(*yes, 'help me' has a space)

That is not how there story was. You could reserve accounts back in the classic days, and somewhere in 2015 I think there was an exploit which allowed you to register email addresses or something like that and because of that people got the account G, H and 8. $, X, Y, Z is owned by Mojang. I am not sure about help me. $ and help me should be able to join servers, as there is nothing checking illegal username characters as far as I know. I mean there was an exploit where you literally could put § in your username and the auth server wouldn't even recognize it, and this glitch I think is still around but have been patched on Spigot.