A few of you noticed that I had been rather quiet on Twitter recently (more like, quieter than usual) and that was largely due to some unfortunate events.
Long story short, I suspect my Twitter account got broken into.
I have no proof to say for certain that my account had been broken into as the damage was almost non-existent. My password had not been changed and there were no new tweets or direct messages containing links to malicious websites. At least, none that I am aware of.
On Sunday evening I had received a an email from Twitter asking me to change my password, so I logged into Twitter on the following Monday to change it. Before anyone says anything, I went directly to the website. I did not click on the link in the email. After logging into Twitter I saw that I suddenly had zero followers, was following zero people and a member of zero lists.
Shortly afterwards I received a second email from Twitter saying that my account had been successfully reactivated.
It appears that my account had been deactivated by someone without my knowledge.
I promptly changed my password and set about trying to re-follow everyone I had originally followed. Problem is, I could not follow anyone, nor could anyone follow me back. I admit, I started to get pretty upset and panicky over this.
A quick Google search told me it is a rare side-effect to having an account deactivated and reactivated and that everything should be back to normal within 48 hours. I couldn’t wait that long so I sent off an e-mail to Twitter asking them to help resolve it.
It is now Wednesday and after a short email conversation with a slightly less than helpful support rep, I am happy to say that everything appears to be back to normal now (except I am still missing my list of “favourite” tweets). I’m sorry if it caused anyone any upset, and I must thank Jaedia for her efforts in letting everyone know what happened.
I am going to carry on as normal, as though nothing had happened at all.
It only lasted three days but it’s good to be back.
I still feel dirty though.