D’OH! Hillary Clinton’s IT Guy Made This Common Mistake.

His mistake was choosing that username “stonetear.” Unfortunately for Combetta, he had used that name elsewhere on the Internet, which provided amateur detectives with a trail of online breadcrumbs that appear to identify him.

As the Washington Post and others have pointed out, those clues include: archived records linking the name Combetta to a “stonetear” Gmail address; an Etsy account and a video game site where “stonetear” identifies as Paul Combetta; other “stonetear” Reddit points that correspond with Combetta’s personal biography (such as ties to Rhode Island).

To make a long story short, Combetta screwed up by recycling an online handle he had used before. It’s something all of us do. It’s human nature to use the same name, rather than invent a new handle for each Internet site we visit.

But it’s also a great way to get caught if you’re doing something illicit.

I had been assured that Hillary Clinton’s personal and unsecured email server, used for public business while stashed in a bathroom of her private residence, then later wiped clean with BitBleach, was strictly on the up-and-up.