My twitter account has been hacked
At around 4:30am GMT today (Friday 31st March) my Twitter account was hacked. Over three minutes I received alerts about a login from the US and follow-ups to say my password and email address have been changed.
I can’t login to my Twitter account to regain control.* I’ve written to Twitter customer support and they say they will take days to respond. From some research, it seems this is part of a widespread and accelerating trend of attacks, often resulting in accounts being permanently lost.
For now, I’m just posting to say:
If you see Tweets, or receive DMs, from my account in the next few hours/days, they’re not coming from me (I will post again here if I manage to regain access to the account)
This will be an interesting insight into the brokeness of Twitter. Are they able to function at a level that can protect the professional and personal value of accounts that have been built up over a decade or more?
Learn from my mistakes! Make sure you max out all your Twitter security measures, do anything you can to backup (e.g. your most critical followers) and, longer-term, diversify your online presence.
If you follow me on Twitter, and especially if you think you have a similar follower base to mine, consider sharing this as a way to warn my followers and as a cautionary tale.
For now, though — @jamestplunkett, or the account that was linked to that Twitter handle, is not me!
[*] If you see this shared on my Twitter it’s because the Substack link is still working!