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An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

privacy.twitter.com

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Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#71

Post by yodsanklai »

some_random wrote: post #6

>If you operate a pseudonymous Twitter account, we understand the risks an incident like this can introduce and deeply regret that this happened. To keep your identity as veiled as possible, we recommend not adding a publicly known phone number or email address to your Twitter account. I'm so sick of this kind of victim blaming, you're forced to add a phone number to use twitter.

> If you operate a pseudonymous Twitter account

If you operate a pseudonymous account anywhere, you should always assume there's a slight possibility that one day your identity is known.

I think it's not far stretched to think that in the future, malevolent governments will have access to whatever things we may have posted and use it against us.

Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#72

Post by [deleted] »

philliphaydon wrote: post #51
RL_Quine wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many "IOT" providers give physical numbers for almost no cost, and they provide physical SIM cards for the service. The aren't VOIP so aren't blocked by twilio, etc for use with Twitter and other services.

Any examples of providers?

[deleted]

Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#73

Post by thaumasiotes »

davchana wrote: post #34
colechristensen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>countries where a phone number has an annual fee of hundreds of dollars. Is this a thing? I've never heard of it. Where?

In India, its not expensive at all, but every sim card is available only after you provide a copy of your national id card aka Aadhar Card.

> but every sim card is available only after you provide a copy of your national id card aka Aadhar Card.

Can you not get an activated SIM off the street?

Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#75

Post by throw03172019 »

>If you operate a pseudonymous Twitter account…we recommend not adding a publicly known phone number to your Twitter account.

Dear Twitter, We need a phone number to be able to use Twitter longer than a week otherwise we get blocked for “suspicious activity” (which is entirely bullshit - logging in from the same IP is not suspicious).

So what should we do? Go to AT&T and open a new line? Jokers.

Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#76

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

Can we have a proper postmortem about this please, with information about the exact process that was required to obtain this information?

> We take our responsibility to protect your privacy very seriously and it is unfortunate that this happened.

Patently not seriously enough.

Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#79

Post by drvsh »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #73
davchana wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In India, its not expensive at all, but every sim card is available only after you provide a copy of your national id card aka Aadhar Card.

> but every sim card is available only after you provide a copy of your national id card aka Aadhar Card. Can you not get an activated SIM off the street?

No

Re: An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

#80

Post by myself248 »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

So after forcing users to enter a phone number to continue using twitter, despite twitter having no need to know the users phone number, they then leak the phone numbers and associated accounts. Great. But it gets worse... After being told of the leak in January, rather than disclosing the fact millions of users data had been open for anyone who looked, they quietly fixed it and hoped nobody else had found it. It was…

The whole announcement reeks of "Stop hitting yourself!"

What scum. They had lots of chances to fix this, the first one being not collecting phone numbers in the first place. They chose to do that, and then they didn't adequately protect it, and now they're oh so very surprised that someone might be doxing their most vulnerable users.

If anyone is harmed by this, Twitter should be held liable.

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