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Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

jacquesmattheij.com

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

#121

Post by jacquesm »

ffhhj wrote: post #116
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

》What is interesting is that the account was blocked within seconds of the tweet being posted Do you suspect inner job or flagging bot farm?

Good question, no idea, it could be either I guess. But the speed suggests at least some kind of targeting.

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

#122

Post by lolollllllloll »

ziddoap wrote: post #103
filoleg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that OP was making very pro-Ukraine statements and expressing their support for Ukraine on twitter up until that point, I believe it is extremely unlikely they just got drunk and tweeted "Die on the job..." to a pro-Ukrainian publisher called The Kyiv Independent. Even their HN reputation aside, it just doesn't make sense. I am one of the first people to always take OP statements with a gran of salt in cases li…

> I believe it is extremely unlikely they just got drunk and tweeted "Die on the job..." Is it not even more unlikely that Twitter itself was hacked, just so someone could post this tweet as OP? I agree it is an uncharacteristic tweet on the OPs behalf, but... If we are to believe OPs claim that there is "no possible way" their machine and/or account have been hacked... My next step isn't thinking "Well, all of Twitt…

No post body was provided.

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

#123

Post by TT-392 »

jacquesm wrote: post #24
rexreed wrote: 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…

>Good question. That makes me wonder if they are able to operate safely at scale at all. With those standards, I don't think many of the tech giants can operate at scale at all. Not that I think they shouldn't be held to those standards, but that incompetence just doesn't surprise me at all.

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

#124

Post by bell-cot »

rosndo wrote: post #59
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are way out of line.

Not really. If you weren’t a prolific HN commenter this would be the top comment here. Right now you’re making an extraordinary claim with zero evidence. Pointing this out isn’t “out of line”. E: As it turns out, not only was I not out of line, I was also entirely correct. You wrote this tweet Jacques, you just forgot. It’s not unusual at your age. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31240589 It’s time for you to ap…

From a quick glance at the "In Comments" section of the HN FAQ...yes, OP is quite correct that your "More likely story..." comment is way out of line.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

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

#125

Post by mort96 »

> Twitter believes that I should delete the Tweet (which I didn’t make in the first place)

But... It's on your account. If Twitter's condition for re-instating the account is that you delete this tweet, and you have enough access to your account to be able to delete the tweet, why aren't you deleting the tweet?

And:

> Twitter is behaving wholly irresponsible here: there is absolutely no way that if my account was compromised that they could not have noticed this prior to issuing the block, and as far as I can see my account is still there, which means that either someone social engineered Twitter into changing the password, then immediately turned around to compromise then get my account blocked or that Twitter has much larger problems in not being able to detect attempts at account compromise.

What if someone got hold of your password somehow? I'm sure Twitter has suspicious login detection, but those things can never be perfect. Maybe OP has really good reasons to think that there's no possible explanation other than a Twitter vulnerability or social engineering a Twitter employee, but none of that reasoning is in this post?

What a weird blog post.

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

#126

Post by jacquesm »

ziddoap wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not unheard of as a distraction technique. Similar to flooding an inbox with spam mail so the "changed password" email gets missed in the flurry. You could be spending all of your time trying to solve your Twitter issue while time is being taken to delicately extract some of those "far juicier" targets. Not saying this is for sure, but just one reason why a malicious actor might act in this way. If you haven't…

Good one, never thought of that. One more reason to want to get to the bottom of how this was done.

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

#127

Post by lolollllllloll »

ffhhj wrote: post #116
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

》What is interesting is that the account was blocked within seconds of the tweet being posted Do you suspect inner job or flagging bot farm?

No post body was provided.

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

#128

Post by js2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #104
vorpalhex wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably time to shut down the machine in question, clone it and do a forensics run on the clone. Use a new machine temporarily. Obviously other vectors are possible, but in the absence of knowledge it is likely appropriate to react in a secure by default way.

Yes, this is good advice.

If I didn't know you to be tech savvy, I'd assume the most likely culprit is that your desktop had been hacked and the tweet did in fact come it.

Out of curiosity which OS and browser?

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

#129

Post by ttybird2 »

hezralig wrote: post #47

I got my account suspended, in real time, this weekend for following people who liked my tweet. I can log into my account but am presented with a splash page about how my account might be compromised and how I need to reset my password to unsuspend it. It seems like I am shadow banned and the "contact our appeals team" is a CYA measure since they will not do a single thing to help or even verify my identity. They mig…

This is similar to what happened to me and my gmail.

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

#130

Post by lolollllllloll »

david927 wrote: post #108
mkmk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the author is very prolific and sane on hackernews(at least as far as I've noticed), so the post could be considered more trustworthy than a random post by somebody who has never participated here before.

As someone with a 15-year-old account here, I can verify that Jacques is in a special, small group of members of this community with recognized user names -- based on a long and impeccable record of substantial knowledge and respected expertise.

No post body was provided.
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