30 April 2012

Twitter Account Got Hacked!

I don't know how it happened, but it did. I have been more involved with the book that I am editing than the online work recently so it could have happened any time last month. All I know is I got a message from the Twitter customer care team saying that my account information had been reset. I had no clue what happened and did not pay too much attention to it.
I, of all people, should have known better. My account had been hacked and every single person on my follower list was @ messaged with a link to some unsafe site. I was blissfully unaware of this till I happened to come to this blog. On the home page I had an app which would show my last few tweets. Imagine my shock when I saw just what these were.
Anyway, I logged into my Twitter account after using the change password link from the email that they had sent me. Now I reset the information and began deleting the tweets that had the link. Imagine my horror when I realized that it was not just a few but literally thousands of tweets. Thanks to the built in security measures at Twitter I can not delete these en mass, but have to do so one at a time.
It was just not worth the effort. So I have deactivated the account and am now going to stick with the blog and Facebook to share whatever I want to. A real violation of privacy and steady reminder of just how unsafe data shared online can be. As of now I am not restarting the twitter account as it really does not provide me with any special advantage. So if you need to get in touch with me use email or Facebook.

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