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Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

jacquesmattheij.com

31–40 of 276 posts

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#31
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know whether the author of the post actually wrote the tweet in question It's in the title. > or if his account was compromised despite him saying it wasn’t… I'm not sure, it could be, it could be a hack of Twitter as well. At this point I don't want to rule anything out because the only thing I know for sure is that I did not write that tweet.

If somebody had that kind of an exploit of Twitter, is it really plausible they'd use it for such an inconsequential tweet and on your account? Seems like there would be far juicier targets.

That I agree with. Still, no indication at all that anything besides Twitter has been abused and believe me there are far juicier targets on this machine as well. So why just Twitter if someone has compromised my main work machine? That would really make no sense.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#32

I'm confused, are you able to log in but not do anything? How are you able to see the tweet you screen shotted? Did you actually see it posted to your account?

No, I can't log in. All I get is that screen over and over again.

> Did you actually see it posted to your account?

No.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way that my account password was compromised without a much more elaborate hack of Twitter, either that or someone social engineered them to change my password.

or you have a keylogger on your computer, or were phished yourself

Not a chance. Seriously, I'm if anything utterly paranoid about this sort of thing and this box is as secure as it ever was.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#34
post #28

Twitter suspended my twelve year old account for most of a year without explanation. Eight months later, my appeal worked and I got it back and was told it was an error in automated spam detection. Eight months! It was a 12 year old account. For those eight months I couldn't even get support to reply. Twitter has been garbage for years. The app is a great idea, I hope it gets fixed.

Wow that's bad news.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way that my account password was compromised without a much more elaborate hack of Twitter, either that or someone social engineered them to change my password.

I think 2FA is to guard against someone gaming their "lost my password" process as much as against someone brute-forcing your pw.

Yes, but that would actually be less secure because my phone number is quite public and I'd be a SIM swap attack away from someone being able to compromise this account in a way that I would not be able to easily recover from (and to lose my long time phone number in the process).

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#36
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also confused. How is Twitter supposed to know that the Tweet was made by the OP or was a compromised Tweet? When something is egregious what should Twitter do if it doesn't have resources to investigate whether the tweet was "intentional" or not, if action must happen quickly to avoid problems? And isn't a claim of "wasn't me" an easy claim whether or not it's true? I'm likewise confused. He says "What really pi…

> How is Twitter supposed to know that the Tweet was made by the OP or was a compromised Tweet? For starters: it would be interesting to see what IP address the tweet was made from, whether or not it was preceded by a password change or contact with Twitter support to turn the account over to someone else. > When something is egregious what should Twitter do if it doesn't have resources to investigate whether the twe…

A side question for folks who work on these sorts of social media / UGC sites. Wouldn't a shadowban / deletion of messages be a lot less antagonistic as a way of dealing with problematic posts instead of instant and total account ban? I mean, if Reddit can shadowban so that your account still works, even if the posts go into the "ether", why can't Twitter do this? Instaban seems a bit... harsh, even if merited? Couldn't you combine shadowban with account ban if there's a persistent set of violation posts? Is there a practical reason why shadowbanning on twitter doesn't work?

I mean if we're going to use fairly simple approaches (keywords on ban lists or user-based flagging / reporting), then shouldn't step one simply be not allowing the post at all, instead of a retroactive instaban on the account after the post has been shared? To me, the simple way is delete the post, or put in a hold queue (warning the user), or at very least not actually share the post on a timeline. Warn the user, don't share the post, and/or delete the post. Then you can still have the desired effect of keeping the platform "safe". Am I missing something? I'm confused all around about social media practices, honestly.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#37

I'm confused - was OP's account compromised, or not? It sounds like it was, but he doesn't seem very fussed about how it happened or keeping it from happening again, just annoyed that Twitter's response to it isn't faster. Is it this commonplace for twitter accounts to be taken over? Also, is saying things like "Go die" an insta-ban on twitter? I don't use it but I thought it took more than that.

> I'm confused - was OP's account compromised, or not? I do not know. The tweet certainly looks like it was made by my account, but definitely not from this computer and definitely not using my password. I'm pretty precise about stuff like that and Twitter would be the least of my problems if my passwords were hacked. For now I am assuming either someone social engineered Twitter to change my password or a compromise…

Could this be a 3rd party twitter client that has been infiltrated? Maybe someone reused a session somewhere?

I'm assuming you are using unique passwords per application.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#38

I'm confused - was OP's account compromised, or not? It sounds like it was, but he doesn't seem very fussed about how it happened or keeping it from happening again, just annoyed that Twitter's response to it isn't faster. Is it this commonplace for twitter accounts to be taken over? Also, is saying things like "Go die" an insta-ban on twitter? I don't use it but I thought it took more than that.

> I'm confused - was OP's account compromised, or not? I do not know. The tweet certainly looks like it was made by my account, but definitely not from this computer and definitely not using my password. I'm pretty precise about stuff like that and Twitter would be the least of my problems if my passwords were hacked. For now I am assuming either someone social engineered Twitter to change my password or a compromise…

is it possible that something that had api access did it?
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