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Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

jacquesmattheij.com

131–140 of 276 posts

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

#131

I don't understand the tweet. "@A @B @C Die on the job..." Is that an incomplete news report that people have died? Is it some kind of ridiculous imperative statement? The ellipsis seems to indicate the former. Either way it just seems like some garbage spam to be ignored.

I don't understand the tweet either because I can't see the context in which it was made. If there was any...

Tweet is addressed to several accounts, one of them is KyivIndependent which reports Ukraine related news. The tweet looks like a death wish from RU supporter.

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

#132
post #125

> 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 com…

> why aren't you deleting the tweet?

Because deleting it would remove the one bit of evidence that this happened and may well wipe out the data that would allow establishing how this was done.

> What if someone got hold of your password somehow?

Theoretically possible, practically not very likely for all kinds of reasons which I won't go into here but which you are going to have to take my word for. Let's just say that I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to stuff like this.

> I'm sure Twitter has suspicious login detection, but those things can never be perfect.

Apparently...

> 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?

Well, let's just say that I've been around for a while and to date have not yet had any of my accounts compromised, ever. That this should happen on Twitter where there has been a long history of such things happening is not all that surprising and when it comes to evaluating Twitter account security versus me being able to keep my passwords to myself I'm going to be arrogant enough to claim that I think that I can do that.

There is plenty of evidence for Twitter accounts being compromised, in fact, one comment here links to a SIM swap attack against Twitter's CEO...

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

#133

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…

For now I am assuming either someone social engineered Twitter to change my password or a compromise of Twitter of some sort. Try to log in with a clear cache or in a private window. If you get redirected back to the page saying to delete the tweet, then you know your password wasn't changed.

Good one, will try that right away!

Edit: Yes, that worked, so clearly the password is unchanged. Thank you, that at least is a concrete step forward. But that in a way only deepens the mystery.

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

#135
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

》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.

Third possibility is Twitter's anti-abuse flagged a suspicious login and locked the account for your own protection. An instant, algorithmic ban limits the damage the impostor can do.

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

#136
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The simplest scenario I can think of that fits is that a really immature person had physical access to your device with an active twitter session.

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

#137
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…

>> 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 tweet was "intentional" or not, if action must happen quickly to avoid problems?

> Good question. That makes me wonder if they are able to operate safely at scale at all.

i'll hazard a guess that this isn't a factor at all, since the vast majority of cases where such differences exist could be explained by the user traveling and logging in from a different location. your abuse team would declare open riot if they needed to investigate whether every "posted abusive tweet, but from a coffee shop wifi instead of their home" needed to be evaluated as a possible hijack.

like most large services, Twitter has self-service hijack protections: you should receive email notifications when Twitter sees a login from an unknown location (i sure do) with the usual CTA about changing your password and such if you do not recognize it. that does appear to be what you should do here, insofar as they state you can cancel the appeal, delete the tweet, and regain access. asking users to delete tweets made by a compromised account sounds normal enough, given that it's both what will happen anyway

i'll grant that Twitter's account blocks and support system can be _bad_, in that they often have conflicting or outdated instructions, but that's only a problem when the recovery process fails, not when you don't attempt it. this seems more a complaint that they don't offer concierge service but, eh, not much surprise there.

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

#138
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Linux, fairly well hardened, Firefox with umatrix and adblock plus.

No Javascript unless expressly authorized making some kind of drive-by browser attack quite unlikely.

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Third possibility is Twitter's anti-abuse flagged a suspicious login and locked the account for your own protection. An instant, algorithmic ban limits the damage the impostor can do.

Author should have received a warning email about it, unless it's compromised as well.

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

#140
post #125

> 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 com…

> why aren't you deleting the tweet? Because deleting it would remove the one bit of evidence that this happened and may well wipe out the data that would allow establishing how this was done. > What if someone got hold of your password somehow? Theoretically possible, practically not very likely for all kinds of reasons which I won't go into here but which you are going to have to take my word for. Let's just say th…

> Because deleting it would remove the one bit of evidence that this happened and may well wipe out the data that would allow establishing how this was done.

It’s not clear from the post that you have the option to delete the tweet but are choosing not to. I think perhaps some of the confusion in this thread comes from that omission.

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