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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

#191

Post by ericabiz »

jacquesm wrote: post #110
garrettgarcia wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account being compromised doesn't necessarily mean your password was compromised. Attackers are constantly developing new ways of accessing people's accounts. There's no valid reason to assume that there was an "elaborate hack of Twitter." Even people who are very careful, as it sounds like you are, can be successfully targeted. I don't know if turning on 2FA would have prevented this, but it sure wouldn't have…

Then I'm super interested in the mechanism used because I was under the impression that as long as my password is secure my account is secure barring a hack of Twitter at an entirely different level. 2FA the way Twitter uses it (using SMS to phone number) would in my opinion be less secure rather than more secure because it opens up a whole slew of possible attacks that would then also involve my phone.

FYI, Twitter supports Google Authenticator as well.

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

#192

Post by jacquesm »

Kiro wrote: post #142
jacquesm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is possible, but I have absolutely zero evidence for that at this point. I would either think someone successfully managed to social engineer Twitter into making an unauthorized change or that there is some other avenue besides the regular interface that allowed access to my account (so not protected by my password or session).

I see now that you are very prolific on HN, even being #2 on the Leaders list: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders So I guess your suspicions that there's more than meets the eye have more merit than if it would be a random poster. However, my initial reaction was still "what makes this different than any other hack?".

Nothing, that much is clear. But - and this worries me at a different level - if getting blocked from Twitter is this easy maybe I should not be putting time into it at all.

But it's very convenient to keep contact with a large number of people with very diverse interests.

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

#193

Post by jacquesm »

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…

Yes, it is more unlikely. But I have an unbroken record of many years of being able to maintain my accounts without any compromises and to date have not seen anything even remotely like this happen. Twitter on the other hand...

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

#194

Post by archsurface »

I consider twitter accounts disposable. "Give us, an advertising company, your phone number, then delete the offending tweet, which we're not showing you yet, then we'll let you back in". There is no way I'm giving you my phone number. Therefore I don't know which tweet was offensive, and how so; so I will continue to make that same mistake. If Musk didn't take into account locked accounts, he will have paid tens of billions too much, because I know I'm not alone in having lost count of locked accounts.

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

#195

Post by jacquesm »

doldols wrote: post #172
bell-cot wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sorry, I totally missed the “Blindly believe all outrageous claims posted on HN” part of the guidelines. My bad.

No post body was provided.

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

#196

Post by gridspy »

deltarholamda wrote: post #67
wfhordie wrote: post #9

I am sort of baffled by all the ink being spilt about Twitter. I still find it jarring that anyone reports on “tweets,” and that there is even a process to ‘appeal’ a decision made ‘about a tweet.’ Anyway, meta-commentary aside, this blog post is something of a mystery. I don’t know whether the author of the post actually wrote the tweet in question and is somehow trying to get back onto Twitter, or if his account wa…

>I still find it jarring that anyone reports on “tweets,” Reporters love Twitter, so they spend a lot of time on it. If reporters spent a lot of time in D&D sessions, they would report about every typo in "Dragon" magazine. Reporters love spending a lot of time on Twitter. It looks like work; it smells like work; but it is definitely not work.

Perhaps because there are sources posting on Twitter?

Reporters often rely on tips. It's like going fishing. If the oceans were full of fish and you wanted fish - surely spending time fishing would make sense?

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

#197

Post by jrootabega »

jacquesm wrote: post #176
bryced wrote: post #163

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

Ok interesting, but within that context the tweet at least makes some sense but does not call for someone to die explicitly... it just gets weirder...

"Die on the job" could be seen as a command, or as "[Learn on the job? More like] Die on the job"

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

#198

Post by WorldMaker »

jacquesm wrote: post #45
joshu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No api accesses granted as far as I can remember. But good call, I had not yet thought of that one.

It may have also been "Web Intent" abuse?

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/t...

Web Intent is a very open API and doesn't require a specific API relationship (you don't need to approve an "app" to do it). It is built to present a confirmation page specific to the given "Web Intent" interaction, but there have been reports over the years of adware/malware bypassing the confirmation page (or phishing the confirmation page) as a spam vector.

Web Intent is on the list of paranoia reasons to not browse the web with an active Twitter session.

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

#199

Post by stonogo »

This story is truly bizarre. The author seems to think their Twitter account is really, really important, so important that it must be preserved for the authorities to investigate. Meanwhile, the obvious answer -- that the author's Twitter account got hacked and co-opted by some Russian disinformation operative -- is rejected out of hand, as we are assured that the author is just too secure to be hacked, because for instance he rejects Twitter's 2FA account protections. We're supposed to believe that sim-swap attacks targeting his specific profile (remember, we're assuming this Twitter account is really influential) is something to be expected with a greater frequency than a browser vulnerability leaking his Twitter credentials.

This whole thing seems like it boils down to "twitter user hacked, delusions of grandeur slow recovery."

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

#200

Post by bryced »

jacquesm wrote: post #176
bryced wrote: post #163

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

Ok interesting, but within that context the tweet at least makes some sense but does not call for someone to die explicitly... it just gets weirder...

Doesn't seem very mysterious.

When taken in context it looks like an innocuous tweet but to a twitter censorship algorithm that isn't aware of the context it looks like a command for someone to die.

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