Leakobit: Alan Carton

Alan Carton, creator of the @diditleak Twitter service, died earlier this month.

Carton started tracking music industry leaks in 2007, and managed to keep himself anonymous to the end. He kept running the service even while being treated in hospital for the tumour which claimed his life, as his mother told Village Voice:

At the hospital, Carton saw the leak tips arriving on his phone and was clamoring for his laptop. "Oh my God! I gotta get on here, my followers will be wondering what I've got!" he said, according to his mother. He was admitted to the hospital on a Friday and was updating @diditleak by Sunday. "In the hospital, he always had his laptop with him and his cellphone," Jennifer remembers. "Alan would write while he was in bed. People write and say his 'company' was so cool. He said, 'Little do they know I'm just lying in the hospital here with cancer, just bored with nothing to do.'"

In the last 24 hours, the DidItLeak Twitter feed has resumed sending out updates, in part as a tribute to Carton's work.

Alan Carton died last Saturday. He was 23.