On February 1, 2013 Twitter announced to the public that they suffered a security breach and your account may be affected.
This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users.
As a precautionary security measure, we have reset passwords and revoked session tokens for these accounts. If your account was one of them, you will have recently received (or will shortly) an email from us at the address associated with your Twitter account notifying you that you will need to create a new password. Your old password will not work when you try to log in to Twitter.
Source: Keeping our users secure
Even if you did not receive an email from Twitter that your account may have been compromised, they advised that you log-in and change your password.
I have logged in and changed all my passwords to good strong ones and hope you do too.
WordPress Security Tip: If you have your Twitter feed/stream in your sidebar widget be sure your tweets are your own or replies in good taste. You never know when someone may say something negative or spammy that shows up on your site.
Do Your Part to Help Protect Other Twitter Users
Be sure to tell your friends, family and colleagues. You can also share this article using the social icons below.
Stay safe out there!
This was a good time to deactivate some old Twitter accounts and they had some weak passwords!
Great point Christine!!! Get rid of old’ Twitter accounts like you no longer use like old websites, plugins and themes.
I went through and deleted about 20 apps attached to my Twitter account after I changed my password. It’s amazing how many there were I no longer use.
I agree – I was amazed at how quickly those linked apps add up! I had no idea that I had that many on my twitter accounts!
I hate to admit it, but my 3 twitter accounts were using the same password! It just goes to show you how long I had ’em! They were created before my RoboForm (and now LastPass) days! I used this opportunity to change each of them and make them different and distinct!
Thanks!
Paul.
The password must have been weak. I think that one _strong_ password for several accounts is not a problem, or is it? Anyway, you can check the strength of the password by many online tools: http://password-checker.online-domain-tools.com, http://www.passwordmeter.com/ etc. to give you a clue of how safe you are.
Hi John,
One strong password for several account is a problem. Any place you log-in Online should have it’s own unique password. I use http://www.lastpass.com to manage them. Works great! BTW, thanks for the links for password strength tools.
Yes i am agree with you Regina Smola. I also use Lastpass to manage paswords, it’s so easy to use and really time saver.
I follow myself by RSS feed to keep an eye on my accounts for this very reason.
Plus I noticed that my RSS feed shows some mentions that are not picked up by social media clients like TweetDeck
All changed
Thanks for the quick reminder Regina.
Only just heard it on the news here in the UK so you were pretty sharp with this poat!
What the?! Really?
I just hope the hacked accounts where spam accounts
I changed my twitter password and shared with my friends. Thanks for the info!