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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

#161

Post by jacquesm »

ffhhj wrote: post #139
perihelions wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I did not. I have received three emails from Twitter today,

One to indicate that my account was locked (2 minutes after that particular tweet was made), one that my appeal has been logged and one that I tried to log in from a machine that had not been seen by Twitter before (true, a VM temporarily booted to check whether or not the password had been changed).

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

#162

Post by tablespoon »

tedivm wrote: post #148
jacquesm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's not how computers work. You'll mark it as deleted and then the "deleted" column (or field or whatever) will turn from false to true. No forensic evidence will be lost.

>> 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.

> That's not how computers work.

No, not necessarily: computers definitely support hard deletion.

> You'll mark it as deleted and then the "deleted" column (or field or whatever) will turn from false to true. No forensic evidence will be lost.

Twitter likely implemented it as a soft delete, but that's by no means certain. And even if they did, a soft delete would mean only Twitter's internal teams would have access to the evidence, and there may be a desire for the evidence to be publicly accessible.

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

#163

Post by bryced »

Seems most likely you replied to this tweet and forgot. Your tweet makes sense in this context.

"They arent bothering to train current conscripts. Some Russian soldiers say they are given a weapon and sent straight in. Learn on the job." 11:29 AM · May 2, 2022

https://twitter.com/Johnrigsby128/status/1521195277033648129

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

#164

Post by mdoms »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
ineptech wrote: post #15

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…

This is so confusing that at this point it feels like you're intentionally withholding information. Answer the simple question, has your password changed? Because if not then we can concretely rule out social engineering attacks - if they didn't know your password to begin with then they couldn't change it back, and if they did there would be no need for a social engineering attack.

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

#165

Post by jacquesm »

im3w1l wrote: post #136
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.

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.

I was at this computer for many hours in a row today, nobody but me had access to this box from well before the Tweet was made right up to now.

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

#166

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

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.

Counterpoint: mulch your account every so often.

It fights the development of cliques and forces people to focus on the message, not the messenger. And it sharpens your own need to make a good point, rather than posting as $KNOWN_USER and waiting for the clicks.

I've done this roughly every ~1-2 years or so since I joined about a decade ago, so my ~8-9k of aggregated karma is spread across multiple accounts.

On that topic, it's about time to rotate to a new one. Catch you all on the other side ;)

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

#167

Post by jacquesm »

wfhordie wrote: post #150
jacquesm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's entirely their problem. I don't write tweets like that, don't drink, don't get high (as another commenter suggested) and stand by my words. This is not something trivial to me, someone is apparently able to impersonate me on a platform with massive reach and that means that if this doesn't get resolved in a serious manner that Twitter is utterly dead to me. And that probably was the goal of whoever did this so…

And you could get unbanned by deleting the tweet, is that right?

Not necessarily, because the 'delete tweet' option is not visible on any page that I currently have access to, the only page that I get is the one where I have to enter my phone number.

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

#168

Post by doldols »

Jenya_ wrote: post #156
jacquesm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it wasn't as a reply to anything? Pretty weird. I'm about as far from a RU supporter as it gets, as my very extensive tweet history amply documents. But it would be a pretty good way to discredit me.

I agree, this looks like a quick and dirty attempt to get account blocked.

Except it doesn’t. Twitter doesn’t usually ban accounts for tweets like these. And when they do, they’ll automatically unban you if you delete the tweet.

It’s not like someone randomly tweeted child pornography or bomb threats from his account.

The fact that jacquesm could immediately recover his account by deleting this tweet completely discredits this theory.

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

#170

Post by jacquesm »

latchkey wrote: post #146
jacquesm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but they are still asking for it even now and they prefix it with the NL country code.

Easy enough to figure out NL, your phone number is in your HN profile. Then, the hacker just gets a local number, which should be easy enough these days.

True, but I would assume this is because Twitter has geolocated my IP to NL.
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