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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

#251

Post by stagas »

jacquesm wrote: post #245
stagas wrote: post #239

Is it possible for the "appeal" process to be compromised with any arbitrary content so that was what triggered the email? Are you sure the email is really from Twitter and not some kind of phishing?

It certainly doesn't look like a phishing email. That said, I've received plenty of email from Google where I was quite sure that it was phishing when eventually it turned out that it wasn't so I guess anything is possible. But it definitely looks genuine, headers and all.

The appeal process could have a security hole, it wouldn't be surprising if some request can be manipulated to seem as if you're appealing a Tweet of any content and have it trigger that automatic email. That's what it looks like to me given all else being true and the account wasn't really hacked.

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

#252

Post by LightG »

jacquesm wrote: post #190
LightG wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do understand, but this was always the trap ... and you signed up to it. I don't blame you, but I sort of do. These are behemoths where you are the product. Don't be surprised when things go awry with not the slightest care in the world by said behemoth about you.

You are 100% right. Still, I expected better. Obviously I was wrong about that. Because (1) whatever is in that tweet isn't reason for a ban by itself (2) given that it says what it does and is so far out of character for me (to wish KyivIndependent and bunch of others to die? rather the opposite...) that it makes me wonder what the real goal here is and (3) if this is some kind of trial balloon they picked the entir…

Fair enough. I wish you success.

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

#253

Post by dec0dedab0de »

jacquesm wrote: post #206
mdoms wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did you write the tweet or not? Your behaviour in this thread is really bizarre dude, can you just be up front with us?

What is bizarre about it? I got locked out of my account for something that makes zero sense to me, I'd like to figure out what happened. Would you not do the same?

You might be able to check your browser history for clues if you maybe replied, and forgot. Though I don't know enough about how twitter works to know if that would reveal anything. I suspect some stuff is SPA-like and other stuff is traditional web. Do you have a proxy, or anything else that could be logging?

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

#254

Post by Melatonic »

jacquesm wrote: post #238
throwntoday wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is common practice in the industry to never delete data. There are also legal reasons for this.

Having been part of 'the industry' for the last 40 years or so I'm fairly well informed about how things are done and that between 'common practice' and 'actual implementation details' there can be a very, very large difference.

Take a screenshot of the Tweet? Download the page with the tweet on it? Seems easy enough if you want a record of it existing. Odd argument for sure. This thread itself is now historical record that it exists.....

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

#255

Post by Melatonic »

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.

Unless his account here is also now compromised :-D

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

#256

Post by foogazi »

jacquesm wrote: post #206
mdoms wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did you write the tweet or not? Your behaviour in this thread is really bizarre dude, can you just be up front with us?

What is bizarre about it? I got locked out of my account for something that makes zero sense to me, I'd like to figure out what happened. Would you not do the same?

But first you claimed you didn’t wrote the tweet

Occam’s razor: did you get hacked or did you reply and blocked for the taken out of context content

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

#257

Post by MauranKilom »

replyifuagree wrote: post #205

The thing I find fascinating is just how many people immediately jumped to OP being in the wrong. As if Twitter is imbued with some sort of "unhackable" attribute. This reminds me of the guy who figured out how to post on FB using Zuckerberg's account (or really anyone's account). History shows us that all software with any complexity has exploits, and it is extremely unlikely that Twitter is the exception the the ru…

But the priors are stacked against OP. Someone gained tweet access to OP's twitter account and... replied in a mildly profane manner to some random tweet? With zero indication of foul play other than "I didn't do it"?

My very best guess that does not involve "OP has their facts wrong" is "someone at Twitter impersonated them, either intentionally or by accident". Still, what's the point?

From the outside, despite (or rather because of) the status/reputation they have, I'd put my money on "trick of the mind" or some medical problem. The CO poisoning suggestion is honestly higher on my list than "rogue Twitter employee trying to scare OP".

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

#258

Post by drewbeck »

jacquesm wrote: post #132
mort96 wrote: 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.

This has big "When the authorities get here I'll be vindicated!" energy, by which I mean: there's no forensics team heading out to the data warehouse to get to the bottom of what happened. Your tweet isn't that important and it makes sense that Twitter wants you to delete the tweet as a show of good faith.

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

#259

Post by MauranKilom »

So, could you clarify what you were doing at the supposed time of the tweet? Is there any evidence for that in e.g. your browsing history (not to prove it to us, but to yourself)? If it's "I was on Twitter, viewing Ukraine-related tweets" then "you tweeted this yourself (most likely in some altered state of mind)" is an almost unavoidable conclusion. With zero malicious intent, I would recommend one or all of carbon monoxide detector, discussing this situation with a close friend, and/or medical checkup. The similarities to this famous thread are uncanny: https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_post...

One more far-fetched theory would be that Twitter has a race condition or caching problem, which caused someone else's tweet to be posted under your account. But the odds of this happening to only you in particular (and in an on-topic manner!) are essentially zero at Twitter's scale.

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

#260

Post by filoleg »

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…

> Is it not even more unlikely that Twitter itself was hacked, just so someone could post this tweet as OP?

Oh, if that's the point of the argument, then I totally agree with you.

I strongly doubt that Twitter itself was hacked. It makes way more sense that someone else simply got access to OP's account one way or another.

Maybe a compromised device, maybe a compromised network, maybe even just a regular account takeover. Who knows, not the first time I've seen someone being in denial about their own account not being as secure as they believed it was (which is extra ironic, given that OP admitted not having 2FA set up for that account).

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