OTH Twitter Bugs

A couple of people were wondering what was going on the other day when you would block or unfollow someone the #’s stayed the same, I kinda noticed that too on my account. This morning I decided to block some of the spammers & clean up my followers… & I started blocking, instead of #’s going down it went up but then I realized I was getting new followers, but the spammers were still there instead of being deleted from my list. I went searching around & found this from Twitter Support page:

Twitter delays: follow/un-following, block/un-blocking, phone verification

Submitted Jun 18 by crystal
We’re a bit behind… (database lag!)

Twitter is experiencing a delay with completing certain actions, such as following, un-following, blocking/un-blocking, favorting/un-favoriting, or phone verification. Anything that pertains to a relationship between two people may be delayed. Our database is running a bit behind, which causes things to take longer to complete.

How do you know it’s happening to you?

If you try to do something, like un-follow someone or verify your phone, it may look like it doesn’t happen. When you click the un-follow button, you get nothing. You click again… still nothing. If you send your verification code, your phone still doesn’t show up as verified. Sending it again and again doesn’t help.

If your follower numbers are off, it’s most likely because people you’ve followed or un-followed have been suspended for SPAM-like behavior or canceled their account. When this happens, the person is removed but the count is still wrong: Twitter may show 5 followers, but clicking through reveals only 3. This will be resolved as soon as we roll out the next performance enhancement.

How long has this been going on?

The bad news: we’ve seen these problems off and on for awhile, and have been working on a long term solution.

The good news: the long term solution is just about ready. We should have it in about a week.

What can you do?

Be patient… if you follow or un-follow someone, and it doesn’t stick, navigate away from the page without doing anything else. Give the database some time to catch up, and it should eventually ’stick.’

Thanks for your patience while we resolve these issues!

Click below to see more known issues or help

My account is compromised! (hacked?)

Submitted Apr 15 by crystal

How do I know if my account was compromised?

If you’ve entrusted your user name or password to a third party application, or if your Twitter account is vulnerable due to a weak password or compromised network, your account may be compromised.  If any of these things happen to you, take action as soon as possible:

• If tweets you didn’t create appear on your Twitter profile page as posted by you
• If you’re unable to log in to Twitter with your Twitter user name, password, or email address (and you know you haven’t changed them!)
• If trying the password reset gives you the “Oh Snap! We can’t find you!” message when you enter your email address AND/or user name (try both!)

Twitter has added log in limiting, so if someone is trying to use different passwords to get into your account, we disallow access for one hour.  If you’ve tried logging in with too many incorrect passwords, you’ll be locked out.  If you change your password on Twitter, be sure to change it in all of your third party applications as well– if a third party application (like Facebook, Twitterrific, Twhirl, etc.) is trying to use your old password to access your tweets, it will lock you out of your account!

What should I do?

If you notice weird things and you’re still able to log in to your account, immediately do the following:

1. Log out of Twitter immediately (this will invalidate the session cookie)
2. Clear your browser cache and exit your browser completely (this will ensure that suspicious or unwanted stuff is removed!)
3. After you’ve logged out of Twitter, cleared the cache and exited your browser, open a new browser window and log in to Twitter, and immediately reset your password, or, use the Twitter password reset feature to set a new password before logging in again.

Your account should be ok, but submit a Support request and include any statuses that weren’t posted by you in the body of the request.  If you can find the link of the status update before deleting it (click on the time the tweet was posted) and send us that link, even better!

If you’re not able to log in to your account, try to reset your password first.  If you still can’t get in, contact Support.  If you had a phone connected, try sending a ‘help me’ tweet from text to see if posts to your profile.  You may be able to access our Help page, but if you can’t, submit a request directly to support@twitter.com and make sure to include your user name, email address, phone number if you had one associated with the account, and any other identifying information you may have.  Helpful information includes:

• Welcome email with start date of the account
• Any notifications you’ve recently received (follow, direct message, etc.)
• A list of a few friends you’ve recently direct messaged, or who’ve recently messaged you
• An old IM address you verified, if you had an account when Twitter allowed updating via IM
• Your phone number, if it was every attached to your Twitter account

This information help us confirm the true identity of the account owner.

Does it always mean that someone hacked my account?

Not always.  Occasionally, a third party application will have a strange bug that causes weird things to happen your account.  If you start seeing strange behavior, changing your password will stop it, as the application will no longer have access to your account until you give it a new password.  Even if your account wasn’t hacked, if things are appearing that you didn’t put there, it may’ve been compromised, and it’s best to take action as soon as possible.

Precautions

You can avoid incidents by taking minimal risks with your account.

• Choose a strong password with numbers, letters, and symbols. Make your password difficult to reduce the chances of being hacked. Change your password occasionally and don’t use the same password for everything.
• When you leave your computer or stop using a third party application, always log out– especially in a public place!
• Do not select the “remember me” box on someone else’s computer, or on your own if many people use it
• If you can, add a security code to unlock your phone– if your phone is lost or stolen, it’ll be harder for someone to get to your email, Twitter account, or other private information before you change all of your passwords.

Only give your user name and password to trusted third party applications, and take precautions when it comes to your account safety.

**I WILL UPDATE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE OR AS QUESTIONS ARISE IN MY TWITTER! BUT DONT FORGET, CLICK ON “HELP” ON THE TOP OF YOU TWITTER PAGE & YOU CAN SEE MUCH MORE THAN JUST THIS!**