Being Locked Out of Twitter

Last night I had such a scare. It was late, I was logged in with HootSuite as usual. Suddenly, no more tweets coming. The strange thing is one of the columns was still refreshing, one of my Twitter lists. But the rest, just this: "The Twitter credentials are not valid" or something close. Also advice to update my password in HootSuite if I've recently changed my Twitter pass. But I hadn't done that. So...what the hell was happening? I try to login again, same result.

I got on Twitter's web page to login: username and password not valid. Suddenly I got scared! What had happened? Was my account hacked?? And who in the world would want to hack my account, for what?! I try with Echofon, same, I try with Twhirl, same. At this point I was imagining someone starting to tweet from my account, making sick jokes to my friends or sending spam.


Turned to Twitter's support, letting them know about the situation, and I was still scared. What if they answered too late??? Meanwhile I was checking and refreshing my Twitter page over and over. I was scared of seeing tweets that weren't mine. I know it happened before. A friend's account was hacked a while a go. The hacker tweeted as my friend's mother, supposedly letting us know that she had died in a car crash! SICK!!! Of course, it was just a joke, but such a cruel twisted one!

Checked my mail, and found the reply from Twitter, but surprise, not only that. It seems around the time they locked me out, they also sent me a warning to change my password:

"Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset. Please create a new password by opening this link in your browser" and the link followed. I did it and immediately I was back in!

I have to say this was one of the scariest hours on the web for me! Ha, ha, ha! And I have no idea how it could have happened, I'm very careful with the apps I allow access to my account. BTW, I revoked access to all of them, the smart thing to do after this. I'll let back in the ones I trust :p

In the morning I was so relieved to see I could still log in and that nobody had tweeted while I was sleeping! All I can say, you can never be too careful with this! Be careful people, the web is full of wonders, but also of crazy sick people that have nothing better to do that mess with your mind and your web identity!